If Bayern’s passage into the Champions League final had the look and feel of a formality in Lyon, Inter battled, scraped, cheated, resisted and frustrated a superior opponent to capitalize on the first leg advantage and survived to reach the competition’s final. Barcelona ran out of time after failing to find a path to goal for more than 80 minutes, as spectators around the world witnessed a soccer match that resembled a boxer holding his opponent round after round to prevent punches before finally winning on points.
In the absence of Iniesta and Puyol, Barca crashed out of the Champions League competition.
Do the end justify the means? Inter exemplified anti-football for the entire duration of the match, a feat that leaves its achievement dubious in some respects. The team trained by Jose Mourinho started wasting time from the very first minute of the match, when goalkeeper Julio Cesar took 30 seconds to execute a goal kick. It happened again in the third minute and again and again for the rest of the match. It took Inter 15 minutes to cross midfield, well past 20 minutes to reach Barca’s goal and challenge Valdez with a corner kick.
Thiago Motta’s send-off was harsh for Inter and unwarranted, but the referee decision was understandable, given his angle. He saw Busquets catching a seemingly intentional elbow in the face. Motta got away with criminal muggings against Chelsea, but on this occasion he was the victim of his own reputation, albeit incorrectly. Busquets staged the gravity of the contact, triggering Motta’s furious reaction. No wonder he wanted to strangle Busquets on the way off the pitch. Motta not only missed out on today’s triumph but he will also miss the final.
If Inter’s game plan in Barcelona was to defend, after Motta’s send-off they proverbially “parked the bus” in front of their goal and shortened the field to not more than 35 meters, making it very difficult for Barca to find passing lanes or put together their typical combinations. The Catalans had two great chances in the first half – Ibra’s shot blocked in the last instance by Samuel and Messi’s curling shot that was tipped by Cesar just enough. Inter resisted the final 15 minutes of the first half, one key of the match, to reach the break intact and able to regroup.
The second half was a continuation of the first, Barca pressing but stalling around the edge of the box time after time. What became infuriating to even neutral fans was Inter’s repeated staging of fake injuries. Time after time, at every challenge every Inter player wasted time, but none more than Lucio, a behemoth of a defender who plays thuggishly then pretends to be a fragile, delicate ballerina. This guy, despite being a devout Jesus follower, needed a doctor on stand-by on just about every single play he was involved in, grimacing and staying down to waste time without any kind of shame or conscience – a transparent ploy that nevertheless worked on this occasion.
No worries, he is ok. Lucio has the chance to display his antics in the Champions League final against his former club, Bayern Munich.
With so many frequent interruptions by design, Inter prevented Barca’s control over the pace of the match, not allowing the better team to get into a rhythm. Guardiola threw on Maxwell for Milito, but one must wonder why did Milito start to begin with. Bringing in Bojan for Busquets made sense, but 1) taking off Ibra and 2) replacing him with Jeffren instead of Henry did not make sense. Ya Ya Toure had a poor game, he was off and redundant. Valdez literally played sweeper around midfield for most of the second half as Inter had no offensive intention, let alone action or a shot on goal throughout the entire match.
Barca’s final fate started to take shape when Bojan missed a close range header narrowly but unjustifiably. From then on, it just seemed plausible that Barca might not make it. Pique’s goal did raise the spirits and provided for a dramatic final ten minutes. After successive perimeter shots from Xaxi and Messi tested Cesar just before the end of regulation, Bojan scored what was surely the winner and for a couple of seconds it appeared that Barca’s greatness proved sufficient again. Was it a handball? Probably not, but irrelevant now. It was called that way and there would be no more chances for the Catalans.
Mourinho rejoiced at the end of the match with the zeal of a shirtless supporter, grabbing anyone around him to mark his personal achievement. To his credit, Inter defended masterfully and the game plan worked because tactically Mourinho had the right players for this type of a performance. However, if this is how Inter accessed the Champions League final – without any offensive attempt whatsoever – the accomplishment cannot be appreciated outside of the club. Inter got the result, but the sport was cheated on this day.
The final brings Mourinho and Bayern’s coach Louis van Gaal back together, sort of. Mourinho was van Gaal’s assistant at Barca in the 1990s for a couple of years. It also pits Lucio against the club that let him go last summer after several years of service. Inter have a great opportunity for the first time in 38 years, as well as the players, to achieve history. But the Germans are a team of destiny, having sneaked into the knock-off stages and squeezed by Fiorentina and Man United before handily disposing of Lyon.
In Madrid, Bayern will be lead by Arjen Robben and former Barcelona midfield general Marc van Bommel, but will miss the third great catalyst, Frenchman Franck Ribery, who is still suspended. Bayern’s man of the hour Ivica Olic, scorer of all three goals in Lyon on Tuesday and, perhaps most importantly, scorer of two crucial goals that knocked Man United out of the competition, will have to come up with one more great performance. Regardless, it will not be Xavi, Messi or Puyol lifting the Champions League trophy at the Santiago Bernabeu stadium, home arch-rival Real Madrid. Barca must now recover to win La Liga.