Inter without fear against City: the last step is missing to be great in the Champions League

To be a revenge of the last City-Inter It should have been a final. It wasn't, tonight's match at the Etihad. However, it was a difficult test, to be overcome first and foremost mentally, proving to oneself that one could compete against an opponent in which there are many champions. The answer to the final whistle is positive.

Inzaghi's team is not out of place, they create chances as much as they concede them. Like any City opponent, they have to accept being left in a corner for long stretches of the game, ready to strike back. If there is one more step that must be taken to become a threat even in the presence of the English champions, it is that nastiness, precision, ability to hurt in the final meters that often made the difference when (for example above all) Real Madrid beat Guardiola's team. Perhaps Inter created even more than the Merengues did, whose strength is to squeeze out opportunities much more than what happened to Thuram, Taremi, Lautaro and all the others who searched for the door.

It would have been a mockery to lose it in extremis, on those two headers that Gundogan did not address properly. It would have left a bitter taste in the mouth as a corollary to a performance from which it is right to draw strength for the future, the near future with the derby on Sunday and the rest of an endless season. Which Inter has just entered and in which it has the weapons to have its say. Even against the giants of Europe. Even against this Manchester City, faced by mixing the cards as the squad allows, with Pavard, Mkhitaryan and Lautaro initially on the bench. In the derby, presumably, they will take back the shirt from the 1st minute.