• Inter defeat Barcelona after seeing off Bayern in quarters
• Inzaghi: ‘Arsenal or PSG, it’s going to be a great final’

Simone Inzaghi claimed that his Inter team had beaten “the best two sides in Europe” on their way to the club’s seventh European Cup final.

Inter beat Barcelona 4-3 in extra time here, and 7-6 on aggregate in a spectacular semi-final. Inzaghi’s side also put out Bayern Munich in the quarter-finals, and although the Inter coach was wary of the threat posed by Paris Saint-Germain or Arsenal, he was also keen to recognise the scale of their achievement so far.

Fittingly, after three-and-a-half hours, the 13 goals and the three invasions from the substitutes’ bench, the heavens opened: a downpour that also felt like a kind of baptism. Inter and Barcelona had drained themselves many times over, and discovered every time that they still had more to give. We were in a place beyond plans and maps, beyond shapes and tactics, beyond sanity.

And so ended what turned out to be less a Champions League semi-final and more of an elongated scream, the sort of game that emerges when both sides give up on perfection and in so doing somehow manage to produce it.