Check out our report and watch the goals from the Champions League play-off second leg…
Inter Milan were sent crashing out of the Champions League by a brilliant Bodo/Glimt who won 2-1 at San Siro to secure a 5-2 aggregate win in their knockout play-off tie.
After beating last year’s finalists 3-1 in Norway last week, Kjetil Knutsen’s men dispatched last year’s finalists firstly from a Jens-Petter Hauge goal before a wonderful Hakon Evjen strike sealed the tie, with Alessandro Bastoni’s goal not enough to stop an astonishing upset.
Inter Milan vs Bodo/Glimt as it happened
Inter began the night knowing they would have to take the game to their Norwegian counterparts and that was unsurprisingly how the game started, with the visitors sitting back and playing on the break – just as they did to such good effect last week.
Francisco Esposito headed straight at the keeper before Federico Dimarco forced a good stop with a swerving effort, with Marcus Thuram putting a first finish just wide of the post and then seeing a flying shot deflect over the top.
Nikita Haikin’s busy night in the Bodo net showed no signs of getting any quieter as he pulled off a wonderful stop to deny Alessandro Bastoni’s header from a corner, using superb reflexes to claw the ball off the goal line from point-blank range.
The hosts continued to pepper Bodo’s goal in search of an all-important goal before the break but the visitors managed to hold on until half-time, leaving them 45 minutes from an extraordinary upset.
Overall, Inter had 12 shots in the first half, they’ve never had more without scoring in the opening 45 minutes of a Champions League knockout match on record (since 2003-04).
A handful of more shots came from the hosts early in the second half through Dimarco, Manuel Akanji and Thuram and but once again, they lacked the quality when it mattered and, while Bodo/Glimt appeared to be living more and more dangerously, you got more of a sense it may not be Inter’s night which each passing miss.
And those fears were realised when an Akanji mistake under pressure from three opponents allowed Ole Didrik Blomberg to go through on goal, with his effort well saved by Yann Sommer but only into the path of Hauge, who tapped into an empty net to grab his second of the tie and put the Norwegians in dreamland.
Inter were shellshocked but came back firing and somehow didn’t pull one back when Akanji – eager to make up for his error – sidefooted Dimarco’s cutback onto the post before it rebounded and Haikin got a hand to it to swat the ball away.
A few minutes later, the tie was out of reach for last year’s finalists and it was another breathtaking goal on the counter from Bodo, with Evjen bringing Hauge’s through ball down before firing a sumptuous volley into the back of the net and the visitors were able to hold on for one of the biggest upsets in Champions League history.
Staring down the barrel of an early exit, Bastoni pulled one back to just about keep them in the game in the final 10 minutes when his header after a scramble was adjudged to have crossed the line – but Inter still needed three to stay in the tie.
