UEFA Champions League Review: Internazionale Vs Bayern Munich
“Internazionale deserved the victory,” said Wesley Sneijder to RAI. “We deserved to win – we played well and created a lot of chances – but the reality is that we lost, even if it’s not over yet.
The match had an air of revenge to it yesterday, as Bayern Munich and Internazionale took the field in Milan’s San Siro stadium.
Internazionale and Bayern played each other last season, in Madrid’s Santiago Bernabeu Stadium, and Internazionale won, earning the UEFA Champions League title in the process thanks to two goals from Argentine striker Diego Milito.
Unfortunately for Inter Milan, Diego Milito was not available for yesterday’s match.
Samuel Eto’o was.
Eto’o led the way early in the match, commanding most of Inter’s attacks and dangerous plays in the first half, while the Bavarian side did their best to defend against Inter’s powerful offense and launched their own attacks as well.
The whole match was a pretty Discount Venice sightseeing Tickets affair and it was clear that Inter’s goal was to score early and then become a defensive juggernaut.
The plan wound up being a failure.
Young goal-keeper Thomas Kraft, who almost missed yesterday’s match because of injury, stopped Inter’s strategy cold.
By the second half, neither side had established a clear dominance. Bayern was still dominating the wings, but Inter was still deadly dangerous, sending off exploratory attacks to test out Bayern’s scrambling defenses.
Then, in the 46th minute, Arjen Robben (it’s always Arjen Robben) crossed in a wonderful center to Thomas Muller. Muller managed to head it just wide of the goal. If his hair were just half an inch longer, that would have been Bayern’s first goal.
After that play, Bayern seemed to realize that they could just win the match and they started pressing forward. Attack after attack rained down on Inter, which did manage to pull off its own counter-attacks which remained dangerous.
The match became an affair of Robben vs. Eto’o.
Robben commanding his troops, and Eto’o launching individual attacks, sometimes relying on others.
But as the match progressed, so did Bayern’s dominance. Suddenly, Bayern’s right flank came alive with Robben’s brilliance while attacking grew more and more costly for Inter’s men.
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