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.
