Real Madrid blows past Inter Milan with first-half blitz

It took Real Madrid just thirteen minutes to make clear where this game was headed. Kylian Mbappe finished off a Brahim Diaz pass with his right foot to make it 1-0, and nine minutes later Federico Valverde doubled the lead with a left-footed strike from the center of the box. Real Madrid went on to beat Internazionale 2-1 at the Santiago Bernabeu in the Champions League, though the final score barely hinted at how one-sided the first half really was.

What happened in those opening 46 minutes amounted to almost a full exhibition. Inter started the brighter side, with Marcus Thuram and Hakan Calhanoglu testing Courtois from outside the box, but Real Madrid answered with a one-two punch that flipped the match: Mbappe's opener in the 13th minute and Valverde's follow-up in the 22nd. It didn't stop there either. Before the break, Mbappe, Jude Bellingham and Brahim Diaz all had clear-cut chances to add to the tally, with Brahim even ringing a shot off the post, so the home side could have gone into halftime with a far wider cushion than the scoreboard ultimately showed.

Inter push back and pull one back

The second half told a different story. Inter took control of possession and started to generate danger with crosses and shots from outside the area, with Curtis Jones, John Stones and Alessandro Bastoni all trying their luck. The pressure paid off in the 76th minute when Carlos Augusto connected with a Lautaro Martinez cross to make it 2-1, setting up a tense finish. Real Madrid, having brought on Tchouameni, Yan Diomande and Alvaro Carreras, and with Dean Huijsen and Lautaro Martinez already on yellow cards, held on through the closing minutes and survived a late attempt from Henrikh Mkhitaryan that was met with a solid save from the Real Madrid goalkeeper.

The numbers behind the result

The stats tell an interesting story: Inter clearly controlled possession and corners, but Real Madrid was far more clinical whenever it had the ball.

The post-match xG figures, calculated from shot locations, back up that impression: 4.93 for Real Madrid against 2.44 for Internazionale. In other words, possession aside, the home side created the clearer chances and created them more often, especially during that dominant first half.

Ahead of kickoff, our projection gave Real Madrid a 45% chance to win, with a 26% chance of a draw and a 29% chance of an away win, with total expected goals of 3.23 (1.81 for the home side, 1.42 for the visitors). The final result, 2-1 with three goals on the board, landed fairly close to that overall figure, though the way it unfolded was different from what was forecast: Real Madrid had the game wrapped up well before halftime, sooner than any prediction would have suggested.

What the result means

With this win, Real Madrid moves to 3 points in its Champions League record, with one match played, one win and a goal difference of +1, in a stage of the overall standings where a technical tie among several teams on the same points still holds. Internazionale, on the other hand, is left without points after its clash against Real Madrid, with a negative goal difference reflecting a night in which the slow start proved extremely costly despite the second-half response.