Real Madrid somehow cling on to beat Inter on José Mourinho’s big night

Sometimes football is silly, sometimes it doesn’t make much sense, and sometimes it’s fun for it. On a night when there were 37 shots and the goalkeepers shared 13 occasionally absurd saves between them, José Mourinho’s current side beat his former team Inter on his Champions League return to Real Madrid. Just don’t ask exactly how. Except perhaps to cite Thibaut Courtois, whose astonishing 89th-minute stop from Henrikh Mkhitaryan explained much and allowed them, just, to hold on to the first-half lead they had been given by goals from Kylian Mbappé and Fede Valverde. By Mbappé, Valverde, and Inter themselves, that is. You might be tempted to say the Italians had shot themselves in the foot, only if they tried Courtois would probably save that too. “If he wasn’t voted man of the match tonight, he never will be,” Mourinho said. It took 77 minutes for him to be beaten, Carlos Augusto’s goal giving this match a frantic last 15 minutes and Inter hope of justice, but it didn’t happen again. So a game that could have had any scoreline – “5-1 to us, 6-6, I don’t want to say they could have won,” Mourinho suggested – actually ended 2-1. Madrid’s manager called it “mad, and not a madness I like.”

This wasn’t always good from Madrid, in fact at times it was terrible. There was a void where the midfield should be, Mourinho thanking Trent Alexander-Arnold for filling in a “specific” midfield role that’s not for him. The intensity in the press high up was matched by a passivity elsewhere. Inter played through and round them, clocking up twice as many attacks and passes. At the end the Santiago Bernabéu whistled; Vinícius Júnior in particular felt their frustration. Yet their team, who also could have won by more – Jude Bellingham said he had missed “two sitters” – have started with a win.