The Stadio Olimpico held sixty-eight thousand for a big match, and every seat was taken.
Above the Curva Sud, a colossal TIFO unfurled, a painted banner spanning the full width of the stand, depicting a she-wolf nursing two infants in the colors of Roma, with a single line of text beneath: WHOEVER DEFENDS THE COLOURS OF ROME IS OUR HERO.
Inside the ground, the noise was relentless, not the sharp, contained intensity of the Meazza, but a rolling, reverberating wall of sound that bounced off the stadium’s oval walls and came back doubled.
Thomas sat on the bench, absorbing it.
This was a different kind of atmosphere.
Hotter.
More emotional.
More personal.
Two details from the team sheet had caught his eye.
The first: Guarín was absent.
Not injured, the club’s official line was a “thigh complaint requiring further assessment” but everyone in the squad knew the truth.
Mancini was still making his point.
The Colombian would stay frozen out until the manager decided the lesson had been learned.
The second: Hernanes was starting in his place.
The Brazilian had arrived from Lazio in the summer, and the moment his name was announced over the stadium PA, the Olimpico booed with a venom that went beyond standard visiting-player hostility.
This was personal.
Hernanes had spent four years at Lazio — Roma’s bitterest rivals, the other half of the Derby della Capitale and in that time, he’d scored goals, created havoc, and contributed directly to Lazio victories that still burned in Roma supporters’ memories.
Thomas leaned toward Berni on the bench.
“They really don’t like him, do they?” “He played for Lazio for four years.
In Rome, that’s a life sentence.
These fans will never forgive him.” “Will it affect his game?” Berni grinned.
“Watch.” Hernanes didn’t just handle the hostility.
He fed on it.
From the first whistle, operating as the number ten in Mancini’s 4-3-1-2, the Brazilian was the best player on the pitch by a margin that bordered on embarrassing.
Every time the ball reached his feet, the boos erupted and every time, he did something with it that silenced the boos and replaced them with a grudging, furious hush.
His touch was exquisite.
His passing was surgical.
His movement between the lines created pockets of space that Roma’s midfield couldn’t close quickly enough.
And then, in the 18th minute, he tore the match open.
Inter won the ball on the halfway line.
Kovačić fed Hernanes, who took one touch to set and one touch to look.
Two forwards were making runs — Palacio, drifting wide right, and Icardi, driving centrally toward the edge of the box.
Icardi’s run was the better option.
More direct, more dangerous, a straighter line to goal.
But Hernanes played the pass to Palacio.
The veteran Argentine collected it on the right, cut inside onto his left foot, and curled a shot into the far corner.
1-0.
Inter Milan.
Palacio wheeled away in celebration, embracing Hernanes with genuine warmth.
The Brazilian had chosen the senior man — over the younger, better-positioned alternative.
Thomas, watching from the bench, understood exactly why.
Icardi understood too.
His celebration was perfunctory, a jog toward the group, a few handclaps, no emotion.
Then, in the 39th minute, Hernanes produced something extraordinary.
A foul on the edge of the Roma box.
Free kick, central, thirty metres out.
Hernanes placed the ball, took four steps back, and struck it with a technique that was almost violent in its purity, the ball rising, dipping, and swerving past the wall and the goalkeeper’s desperate dive, crashing into the top corner with a sound that was audible even above the stunned silence of sixty-eight thousand people.
2-0.
Inter Milan.
The Olimpico went quiet.
The kind of quiet that only happens when a home crowd has been so thoroughly humiliated that anger hasn’t yet caught up with shock.
Hernanes sprinted toward the Roma end.
First a backflip — his signature and then a knee slide that carved a track in the grass all the way to the edge of the advertising boards, arms spread, eyes locked on the supporters who’d been jeering him for thirty-nine minutes.
On the bench, Berni leaped to his feet, towel whipping through the air above his head in great, furious circles.
The whooshing sound was loud enough to draw looks from the other substitutes.
“Beautiful!
Absolutely beautiful!” Thomas watched Berni with a mix of admiration and mild alarm.
The goalkeeper’s enthusiasm was total — towel flying, sweat spraying, voice cracking.
He seemed to be expending more energy on the bench than most players were expending on the pitch.
“Do you know his nickname?” Berni asked, dropping back into his seat, flushed and beaming.
“Who, Hernanes?” “They call him the Prophet.
The Brazilians gave him that.
He told me before the match that God would guide him to score at this ground, and he was right.
He always knows.” Thomas filed the information away.
Hernanes was impressive, dazzlingly so.
But the pattern was clear: when the Brazilian had a choice between Palacio and Icardi, Palacio got the ball.
Every time.
Mancini had learned from the Sampdoria debacle.
Away from home, against a side playing with this much emotional intensity, he was never going to open up.
The 4-3-1-2 sat deep, absorbed Roma’s pressure, and hit them on the counter with ruthless efficiency.
Rudi Garcia, Roma’s French coach, had set up aggressively – a 4-3-3 with both full-backs pushed high, essentially a 2-5-3 in attack, throwing everything at Inter from the first minute.
It was brave.
It was also reckless.
When Inter broke through the press, the space behind Roma’s advanced full-backs was cavernous.
Two goals from two counter-attacks.
Garcia’s gamble had backfired spectacularly.
At halftime, the Inter players walked off with the easy body language of a team that knew the job was done.
Smiles, handshakes, casual conversation.
Relaxed.
All except one.
Icardi walked into the dressing room with his head down, a bottle of water in his hand, jaw tight.
He didn’t join the conversations.
He didn’t acknowledge Hernanes’s performance.
He sat in his corner and drank in silence.
Thomas noticed.
He was starting to understand the texture of this squad, the unspoken currents that ran beneath the surface of professional courtesy.
Hernanes had been magnificent, but his magnificence had come at a cost that wouldn’t show up on any stat sheet.
He’d bypassed Icardi.
Again.
And Icardi was keeping count.