Inter Grinds Out Win Over Cagliari at Unipol Domus Behind Early Çalhanoglu Strike

Inter walked away from the Unipol Domus with the bare minimum, a 0-1 win, but the scoreline tells only part of the story. Hakan Çalhanoglu's side dominated from start to finish, piled up chance after chance, and still had to settle for the lone goal that came early, in the 8th minute.

The goal came from a quick move down the flank: Nicolò Barella slipped the pass through, Çalhanoglu arrived from outside the box and finished with his right foot into the right side of Elia Caprile's goal. An early blow that gave Inter the comfort to control the rest of the match on its own terms.

And control it they did. Even before the goal, Lautaro Martínez had given a warning with a header that narrowly missed the target, and after the 0-1 the Argentine kept coming: in the 22nd, 32nd, 34th, 50th, 65th, 66th and 91st minutes he tried his luck without finding the second goal. Francesco Pio Esposito, Federico Dimarco, Alessandro Bastoni, Benjamin Pavard and Nicolò Barella also had their chances in a first half in which Cagliari could hardly breathe. In fact, between the 27th and 28th minutes Inter strung together four shots in a row on a single corner-kick sequence, none of which found the net.

Cagliari, for its part, barely showed up with Daniel Maldini at the start of the second half and, once the substitutions came, with Alieu Fadera and Adam Obert, the latter clipping the crossbar in the 79th minute. The introductions of Kevin Carlos, Raphael Kofler and Fadera himself gave the home side a bit more flow in the second half, but the equalizer never arrived.

The Numbers Confirm the Dominance

The stats make it crystal clear who ran the show. Inter held the ball for nearly two-thirds of the match and outshot Cagliari by a wide margin:

With those 31 shots, our estimate of xG generated in the match gives Inter a 3.753 mark compared to just 0.46 for Cagliari, a gap that captures just how one-sided the game was, even if the final score fell short of that offensive volume.

Our preview published before the match had given Internazionale a 65% chance of winning, against 13% for Cagliari and 22% for a draw, with expected goals of 2.10 for the visitors and 0.84 for the home side. The favorite came through in the result, but the actual match was even more lopsided than our projections suggested: Inter generated far more than expected, and the scoreline, in the end, undersold the level of control on the field.

What It Means in the Standings

With this result, Internazionale climbs to 6 points from 2 matches played, with a perfect record, while Cagliari sits on 3 points after one win and one loss in its two outings. The gap between the two sides in the table is 3 points, though it's worth remembering that only two matchdays of Serie A have been played and the standings still say little about the real level of each squad.

What was clear at the Unipol Domus is that Inter needed nothing more than an early blow and total control of the ball to secure the win, even if the tight final score may not do full justice to the gap that showed on the field.