The second half kicked off at 9:51 PM local time, and Inter Milan came out swinging.
Up in the Sky Sport Italia commentary booth, Fabio Caressa leaned into his microphone.
“And we’re back underway at the Meazza.
Mancini has made a halftime change – Guarín is off, and in his place, a name I confess I don’t recognise.
Number 99, T.
Brenner.
Listed as a youth-team player.
Beppe, what do we know about him?” His co-commentator, Giuseppe Bergomi, former Inter captain, World Cup winner, a man who’d spent his entire playing career in blue and black – squinted at the team sheet.
“Honestly?
Nothing.
He’s from the Primavera squad.
I think Vecchi must have recommended him to fill out the bench.
Very unusual to see him actually come on, though, especially with the team trailing.
Mancini is clearly making some kind of statement about Guarín rather than a tactical decision about this boy.” “Well, let’s see what he can do.
Inter need a spark from somewhere.” Ranocchia started the half with intent.
The captain collected a short pass, surveyed the pitch, and drove forward, two quick strides that carried him past the halfway line before Genoa’s press could react.
His background as a youth-team striker showed in moments like this: he carried the ball with his head up, scanning for options, comfortable in space that most centre-backs would never enter.
Just as two Genoa midfielders converged, Ranocchia slipped a crisp pass to Kovačić.
The Croatian was a different class on the ball.
Twenty years old, fresh off a World Cup where he’d started every game for Croatia, and dripping with the quiet confidence of a player who knew he belonged at this level.
He received the pass on the half-turn, feinted to go left, dragged the ball right with the sole of his boot, and glided past a lunging Genoa midfielder as if the man weren’t there.
Inter’s three lines pushed up as a unit, squeezing Genoa back toward their own penalty area.
“Look at my run!” Palacio shouted, peeling away from his marker, demanding the through ball.
But Kovačić wasn’t ready to go direct.
The angle wasn’t right – too predictable, too easy for Genoa’s back line to read.
Instead, he played a simple pass wide, shifting the ball ten metres to the right.
To Thomas.
The ball rolled across the grass toward him, and every nerve in Thomas’s body fired at once.
This was it.
His first touch in a professional football match.
The Engine activated in a flash – the tactical overlay snapping into focus behind his eyes, mapping the positions of all twenty-two players, tracking the movement vectors, highlighting a corridor on the right flank where Nagatomo was surging forward on the overlap.
Genoa’s shape is stretched.
Right wing-back is free.
Thomas didn’t hesitate.
Without taking a controlling touch – back to the play, unable to see Nagatomo with his physical eyes, he flicked the ball with the outside of his boot, redirecting it into the space ahead of the overlapping run.
The intention was perfect.
The execution was not.
The pass carried too much weight.
It skipped across the grass and rolled harmlessly out of play, two yards ahead of where Nagatomo could reach it.
Thomas stopped and looked back.
Nagatomo was bent over, hands on knees, sweat dripping from his chin.
He hadn’t been expecting the pass – Thomas had been facing the other way when he played it, and the Japanese wing-back had assumed the ball would go centrally.
By the time he’d read the intention and accelerated, it was too late.
Nagatomo, to his credit, jogged back and gave Thomas a small nod.
My fault.
I should’ve been quicker.
But in the centre of the pitch, Palacio was furious.
“He can’t even control a simple ball!” The veteran striker threw his hands in the air.
“What’s he doing out here?” He rounded on Kovačić next.
“You had the through ball to me – why did you pass it to the kid?” In the stands nearest to the touchline, the boos began.
[Who is this number 99?
Can he even play?] [Wasted a perfectly good attack.
This is what happens when you put youth-team players in a Serie A match.] [Inter really are out of options, aren’t they?] Thomas absorbed it all – the boos, Palacio’s frustration, the visible doubt on his teammates’ faces and felt something surprising.
Confidence.
Because he knew the pass was right.
The lane had been correct.
The timing had been correct.
The only thing wrong was the weight and that was a technical problem, not a tactical one.
The Engine’s read had been faster than his teammates’ movement, that was all.
I need to slow down.
Give them a half-second to catch up to what I’m seeing.
He tucked that thought away and kept moving.
But the damage was done.
For the next thirty minutes, his teammates froze him out.
Passes that should have come to Thomas went elsewhere.
Kovačić directed the ball to the flanks rather than through the middle.
Even simple switches of play bypassed his position, as if an invisible wall had been erected around the number 99 shirt.
Thomas ran.
He tracked back.
He pressed.
He did everything Ranocchia had told him to do – covered ground, helped the older legs, made himself available.
But nobody trusted him with the ball, and without the ball, the Engine was useless.
The clock ticked past the 80th minute.
Inter Milan were still trailing 0-1.
A broadcast director, scanning the VIP boxes for a reaction shot, landed on a familiar face behind a floor-to-ceiling glass panel on the upper tier.
Casual clothes, close-cropped hair, an expression caught somewhere between concern and frustration.
The cameras found him almost by accident.
Wesley Sneijder.
The image flashed onto the two giant screens at opposite ends of the Meazza, and the stadium rippled with recognition.
A murmur first, then a gasp, then full-throated noise.
[Sneijder!
It’s Sneijder!] [He’s here – he’s back at the Meazza!] The chant built from the Curva Nord and spread like a wave around the ground, sixty thousand voices merging into a single, aching demand: [Sneijder!
We want Sneijder!] Up in his box, the Dutchman shifted in his seat and exchanged a glance with the friend beside him.
He’d come back to Milan for knee treatment – Galatasaray’s medical facilities weren’t up to the job and the club had invited him to watch the match as a guest.
He’d expected a comfortable win.
Instead, he was watching the team he’d helped to a treble struggle to break down a relegation-threatened Genoa side.
“How did it come to this?” he murmured, shaking his head.
“This is Inter Milan.
This is the Meazza.” The fans kept chanting his name, and Sneijder – for all his professionalism, for all the years and the distance, felt something tighten in his chest.
The clock read 81 minutes.
Inter were running out of time.