Date Published: 04/21/10

Inter destroy Messi and Barca 3-1

Memorandum to world soccer: The way to beat Barcelona? Simple. Give them a local derby in which Catalan fights tooth and nail against Catalan in their own city on Saturday.
Next, put them on the road for 24 hours, and when they arrive, make sure your players hound theirs until they drop, or you do.
Never, ever water the grass, because that is how Barça’s fine players like to move the ball: slick and swift.
Finally, pay José Mourinho $10 million a year to coach or coax extreme belief into your team.
“We feel sure he knows things that can help us,” Wesley Sneijder, Inter Milan’s Dutch midfielder, had said in a television interview before Tuesday’s game, in which Inter came from a goal down to beat Barcelona, 3-1.
The same Sneijder had been a part of the Real Madrid side thrashed, 6-2, on its own turf by Barça last year. This season, he has been a key performer in every step that Inter takes toward the final, at Madrid’s Santiago Bernabéu stadium on May 22.
On the subject of Mourinho, Sneijder is a believer.
The momentum is going Inter’s way. It still has to negotiate the return leg in Barcelona next Wednesday. The field will be bigger and wider and the grass will be cut shorter and better watered.
But if one image of Tuesday in the San Siro really got to the heart of why Inter inflicted the harshest defeat on Barcelona in two seasons, it was Diego Milito of Inter collapsing with cramps after barely an hour’s play.
Here was an Argentine forward, one by no means guaranteed a place in the approaching World Cup, determined to upstage his more famous countryman, Barça’s Lionel Messi. Milito’s night started wretchedly when he missed once, and missed twice, from acute angles in the early moments.
Undaunted, driven maybe by the voice of Mourinho inside his head, he ran again, again and again. It began hurting, visibly, when he dropped to the ground more than once.
Like a boxer pummeled to the canvas, he kept on getting back up, and kept on hurting until he was replaced in the 75th minute. By then, he had won over the 83,000 crowd by making the passes for goals by Sneijder and Maicon before heading in the third.
He was offside, but the Portuguese match officials didn’t see it that way, any more than referee Olegário Benquerença got it right when he denied Barcelona two penalties. First, he chose to punish Dani Alves with a yellow card for what he interpreted as a dive; the cameras showed that Dani had had his legs taken from behind by Sneijder. Moments later, Inter’s defender Lúcio slammed into Gerard Piqué, and the referee saw that as a fair tackle.
But, though Barcelona’s play maker Xavi Hernández reportedly made some comment in the tunnel at the end of the match about a Portuguese being chosen to referee a match involving the most famous Portuguese coach, Mourinho told Rai television: “I want to say something about the Barcelona players. They should be champions when they lose.
“They should say that Inter was strong, and that’s it. Instead, in the tunnel, I saw Barcelona players trying to put pressure on the referee. Their players have short memories — my Chelsea players were complaining after a historically bad refereeing performance helped Barcelona to the final last year.”
It is hard to remember a time when Mourinho and Barcelona, which once employed him as an interpreter and later assistant coach, agreed on a refereeing performance. Whoever is put in charge at the Nou Camp for next Wednesday’s second leg will need ear plugs and a pretty strong constitution.
However, though refereeing played a part in the San Siro, it was not pivotal.
Preparation and perseverance were.
Even before Barcelona scored the opening goal, there were signs of a real testing of character and willpower.

That opening strike, by Pedro after Maxwell had been allowed to sprint beyond both Maicon and Esteban Cambiasso on the left, seemed just reward for Barça’s greater possession.
In fact, that was not the advantage it normally is to Barcelona. By the end, the Catalan team had commanded the ball for 20 minutes more than Inter — 38 minutes as opposed to just 18.
Yet, Inter had prepared for that. Its experienced players knew that, man for man, Barça is the best team in the world at passing the ball. So Inter conceded territory, kept between the orange-shirted opponents and broke forward as swiftly and as hard as they could, whenever they could.
Inter’s players were mentally sharp and physically strong. The forwards, Milito, Goran Pandev and Samuel Eto’o, chased back and forth, harassed and hustled, sacrificed themselves for the win.
“The work they put in was contagious. When you see forwards running that much, fighting for every ball as they did,” Cambiasso told reporters. “It forced us to give our all as well.”
Pep Guardiola, the player turned coach who has implanted the same kind of intensity into Barcelona, acknowledged as much.
“They were always looking to get behind us, and they have very quick attackers,” he said. “They played in their style while we weren’t as effective as we have been in other games. But we have 90 minutes left, and we’re going to try.”
The result when these teams last met, at Nou Camp in November, was 2-0 to home side. The same result would put Barcelona through this time. The likelihood that Inter will arrive comparatively fresh after a short flight rather than a long bus ride was put to Guardiola before he boarded the bus for home.
“Its a long trip, its true,” he told reporters. “But I don’t want to make excuses. I am not a doctor, I cannot say what physical effect it had.”
He might address in private the moment just after half time when Messi, of all people, was caught with the ball by Thiago Motta. It was deep in the Inter half, but before Barcelona reacted, the counterattack was on.
The ball travelled long. Pandev and Milito chased it, and Maicon backed them up to score.
“When I arrived here,” Mourinho said, “Inter was a little team in the Champions League. They had a fear of playing. At this point, we have a chance of winning against the best team. Inter is now a great team in the Champions League.”This article originally appeared in The New York Times.