Real Madrid have a peculiar knack for making football look like a game of moments rather than 90 minutes. Give them the slightest whiff of vulnerability and, before you have finished admiring your tactical plan, they have scored.
Inter Milan gave them two such moments at the Bernabeu last night, while Madrid took both and won 2-1 in their Champions League opener.
And yet, somehow, it was Inter who looked more like the team trying to play proper football.
The visitors had the ball, the initiative and, for long stretches, Madrid pinned back. They kept knocking. Madrid kept waiting.
It was almost like Inter versus sprinters. It was hard to fathom who were the home team.
There was something wonderfully absurd about the contrast. Inter trying to feed a balanced diet of footballing principles. Madrid looked like a team of extraordinary athletes applying a rather simpler principle: win the match.
That is not to say Madrid did not play football. Far from it. There is a particular genius in making tactical plans look like optional paperwork.
And at this level, very few mistakes are entirely unforced.
A good opponent studies your habits, knows where you are vulnerable and waits for the right moment to turn the screw. A strength can become a weakness in the wrong part of the pitch. The instinct to play out can suddenly become the very temptation Madrid have been waiting for.
Their version of control is ruthlessness.
Inter's two errors were therefore not simply gifts. They were invitations Madrid were expert enough to recognise -- and ruthless enough to accept. The first allowed Brahim Diaz to intercept and Kylian Mbappe to pounce; the second came when goalkeeper Josep Martinez tried to play his way out of trouble inside his own area and Federico Valverde gratefully accepted the invitation.
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Real Madrid coach Jose Mourinho embraces Mbappe as he leaves the pitch to be substituted. Photo: AFP
But if football is judged by the means as much as the end, Inter still made the better case.
The most impressive part was what happened after the mistakes. They did not let them derail their game. They kept playing.
That is where Cristian Chivu deserves enormous credit.
His team had already shown that resilience at the weekend, coming from 2-0 down to beat Napoli 3-2. The Bernabeu is hardly the place where comebacks come easily, but Inter kept taking the game to Madrid. Carlos Augusto eventually pulled one back, while Thibaut Courtois repeatedly kept the hosts ahead.
Chivu's reaction afterwards was telling. He was “not angry at all” but “happy with the courage and character” his team had shown. Mistakes, he said, are part of the sport; what matters is how you react to them.
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Inter Milan coach Cristian Chivu with Real Madrid's Ibrahima Konate after the match. Photo: Reuters
That sounds less like the consolation of a beaten manager than the blueprint of one building something.
Chivu knows the winning school intimately. He was part of José Mourinho's great Inter side that won the treble in 2010, including the Champions League. He knows the value of suffering your way through a football match.
Chivu seems to be asking a slightly different question: what if the way you play is part of what you are trying to win?
That may be idealistic. It is certainly not the only way to play.
But the Italian champions did not leave Madrid looking like a team who had been taught a lesson. And perhaps, in defeat, they sent a message to the rest of Europe: this is an Inter nobody will relish facing when the Champions League gets more serious.
