Marcus Thuram will lead Inter Milan’s bid to make a second Champions League final in three seasons by beating Barcelona and keeping alive their trophy hopes from a season which promised so much but could yet deliver nothing. Inter head into their second-leg showdown at the San Siro level following last week’s six-goal thriller which leaves the last-four tie finely balanced and suggested the Italian champions have a chance of getting past the flamboyant La Liga leaders. France forward Thuram will be the focal point of Inter’s attack on Tuesday night, as he was when he made a spectacular return from injury in Catalonia with an early backheeled opener.
Barcelona had to bring on some of their big guns to beat already-relegated Real Valladolid on Saturday while Inter coach Simone Inzaghi managed to rest his entire first XI in a low-key 1-0 win over Verona.
Inzaghi’s assistant Massimiliano Farris said that the first leg efforts “squeezed dry” Inter’s first choice players, who will have to put in another huge shift to get past Barca.
Saturday’s win at a subdued San Siro kept alive Inter’s hopes of retaining the Serie A title but with three matches remaining in Italy and Napoli leading the division by three points the Champions League is now their best hope for a trophy.
That would have seemed ridiculous in the aftermath of Inter’s enthralling quarter-final victory over Bayern Munich, which increased hopes of a Serie A, Italian Cup and Champions League treble.
But without Thuram an exhausted-looking Inter lost their following three domestic fixtures without scoring a goal, going from three points ahead of Napoli at the top to Serie A to three points behind and suffering a miserable cup elimination at the hands of AC Milan.
Doing the impossible
Now the 27-year-old will take on Barca with teammates who have had the rare luxury of a week’s rest after a brutal season which has exposed a lack of squad depth, in particular up front.
Between them Thuram and his strike partner Lautaro Martinez have scored 39 goals in 92 appearances in all competitions, a sign of how little Inzaghi trusts his attacking replacements.
Meanwhile Marko Arnautovic, Mehdi Taremi and Joaquin Correa have netted 10 times in the equivalent of 35 matches — game time mostly spread across substitute appearances — with Arnautovic netting seven of those goals.
That is a problem with Martinez unlikely to start at the San Siro after the Argentina striker and team captain picked up a hamstring injury during the first leg.
Both he and Benjamin Pavard, scorer of the goal which sent Inter past Bayern, risk missing Tuesday’s match although France defender Pavard did return to team training on Sunday following an ankle injury suffered against Roma last month.
Martinez meanwhile is training on his own and is pushing for a place on the bench against Barca, with the hope that he will be ready to at least play some part in a match which will determine in what mood Inter will head into the final weeks of the campaign.
“They’re both at risk (of not playing),” Farris told reporters on Saturday.
“Lautaro will try to do the impossible, while Pavard had a horrible sprain but he has tried to make himself available. We’ll probably end up deciding on them in the pre-match warm-up.”
Inter will hope that Robert Lewandowski stays unavailable, as he was for the first leg, although the Poland captain is training with the rest of the Barca squad.
Defenders Alejandro Balde and Jules Kounde are still out of action, however, and coach Hansi Flick would probably have preferred not to bring on Lamine Yamal and Raphinha at Valladolid ahead of the biggest match of both teams’ season.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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