Thomas dropped back into his seat on the bench, and Berni was on him immediately.
“What did you say to Mancini in the tunnel?” “I asked him for playing time.” “And?” “He said he’d put me on if we go up 3-0.” Berni’s eyes widened.
He gave Thomas a slow, appreciative nod and handed him a towel.
“Then we’d better start willing that third goal into existence.
Come on, wave with me.” What followed was perhaps the most energetic bench performance in the history of Serie A.
Berni had elevated towel-waving to an art form.
Every Inter attack prompted a full-body commitment, the towel whipping overhead in great, sweeping arcs, occasionally incorporating flourishes and twists that seemed to defy the laws of physics.
Thomas tried to keep up and was promptly smacked in the face by Berni’s towel on three separate occasions.
By the sixty-fifth minute, Berni was drenched in sweat, more visibly exhausted than several of the players on the pitch.
But the match itself refused to cooperate.
Roma, trailing 0-2, had lost their appetite for attack.
The second half settled into a dull, grinding stalemate.
Inter controlled possession without threatening.
Roma defended without urgency.
Both sides seemed to have tacitly agreed that 2-0 was a fair result, and neither was particularly interested in disrupting the consensus.
The only exception was Totti.
The thirty-eight-year-old captain prowled the pitch like a man who hadn’t read the room.
While his teammates conserved energy and protected positions, Totti was everywhere, pressing, tackling, demanding the ball, trying to drag the match back to life through sheer force of personality.
He was magnificent and futile in equal measure, a one-man rebellion against the inevitability of the scoreline.
The clock hit eighty minutes.
Inter still hadn’t scored a third goal.
Thomas sat back in his chair, towel draped over his shoulder, the earlier hope draining away.
Mancini had already used two of his three substitutions.
The last slot was being held in reserve, standard practice for a cautious manager who didn’t want to risk playing with ten men if someone got injured in the final minutes.
No third goal meant no Thomas.
Simple as that.
Berni was still waving, still shouting — “Give it to Icardi!
He’s free!”, but even his enthusiasm was starting to sound like faith rather than expectation.
Then Totti changed everything.
It happened in the eighty-second minute.
A loose ball in midfield.
Icardi collected it and turned to drive forward, back to the Roma goal, looking for space to run into.
He never saw Totti coming.
The Roma captain arrived at full speed, lunging desperately in a late bid to win back possession.
While his eyes were fixed on the ball, the challenge came from a risky position directly behind Icardi, sending the striker sprawling face-first into the turf as their legs tangled.
The stadium gasped.
Then went very quiet.
Icardi lay on the ground, clutching his ankle, face twisted in pain.
It was a mistimed and reckless tackle from behind, where the momentum overrode his control, turning a genuine attempt for the ball into a dangerous collision.
The referee’s whistle cut the silence.
Ranocchia and a cluster of Inter players surrounded the official, not aggressively but insistently, pointing back at the fallen Icardi.
Nobody approached Totti directly, he was still Totti, still the most iconic figure in Italian football, and even in anger there was a deference to his status.
Totti himself stood motionless, hands on hips, face calm.
He knew what was coming.
He’d known the moment his studs left the ground.
Red card.
No argument.
On the sideline, Mancini winced.
Icardi’s ankle.
If that’s serious, the next three matches- A roar from the bench shattered his train of thought.
“TOTTI!
Figlio di-” Berni had launched himself off the bench, towel flung aside, and was standing on the touchline screaming Italian profanity at the departing Roma captain with the fury of a man who’d been waiting his entire career for a cause worth getting sent off for.
Totti paused.
He turned slowly toward the bench and looked at Berni with an expression of magnificent contempt.
“And who are you, to talk to me like that?” The two men stepped toward each other.
For a moment, it looked like fists might fly, the retired legend and the goalkeeper who never played, nose to nose on the touchline of the Stadio Olimpico.
Mancini got between them in three quick strides, one hand on each chest.
“Francesco, leave.
Now.
It’s over.” Totti held Berni’s gaze for another second, then turned and walked toward the tunnel without looking back.
Berni was still shouting after him.
“Come try that at the Meazza!
I swear I’ll-” The referee, who had watched the entire exchange with weary professionalism, produced a second red card and showed it to Berni.
Mancini held up two fingers in front of Berni’s face.
“That’s the second time this season.
Both from the bench.
You’re setting records nobody wants to break.” Berni didn’t care.
He was still glaring at the tunnel where Totti had disappeared.
Thomas stared at his friend with something close to awe.
In weeks of knowing Berni, he’d never seen anything but easygoing humour, rock music, and towel-waving.
The transformation was startling.
Yeah, I should definitely keep in mind never to make Berni angry.
With Totti gone, Roma were down to ten men.
The fight drained out of them visibly, shoulders dropping, heads bowing, the body language of a team that had accepted defeat.
Mancini assessed the situation in seconds.
Ten men.
2-0.
Six minutes plus stoppage time remaining.
Roma weren’t going to score.
The risk of a late injury was negligible.
He waved Thomas over.
“Brenner.
The score is only 2-0, but they’re down a man, and they’ve quit.
I’m keeping my promise.” Thomas’s face lit up.
“Thank you, Boss.” “You go on for Palacio.
Find open spaces, play around Icardi.
Keep it simple.
That’s all.” In the eighty-fourth minute, Thomas jogged onto the pitch at the Stadio Olimpico.
The Roma crowd barely noticed, they were too busy filing toward the exits or burying their faces in their scarves.
But Thomas noticed everything.
The grass under his studs.
The floodlights above.
The Engine humming quietly at the back of his mind.
Totti’s reckless red card had injected a surge of energy into the Inter players on the pitch.
Within thirty seconds of the restart, they were pressing high, exploiting the numerical advantage, moving the ball with a crispness that had been absent for most of the second half.
The ball came to Thomas on the right side of the penalty area.
His first touch surprised everyone.