Champions League: Inter Win, Roma Suffer Tough Loss

By: Martha | October 2nd, 2007

Not such a big crowd Inter picked up their third comfortable win in a row today — thanks to Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s fourth brace of the young season — with a 2-0 home win over PSV. The bad news, however, is that they lost both Cristian Chivu (two fairly harsh yellows) and David Suazo (an elbow no cameraman seems to have caught as the final whistle blew) to red cards, and will be without both for the trip to Moscow at the end of the month. Great.

Despite playing with 10 men for nearly the final half-hour, Inter always looked to have the game in hand, and were in control even before Zlatan scored his first Champions League goal in almost two years in the 15th minute. The goal came from the penalty spot after he was dragged down by Jan Kromkamp, and he doubled Inter’s lead 15 minutes later with a looping header off a Figo cross. The “shot” came from near the endline and looked a whole lot more like a cross than what it turned into, but the goal counted and Inter were mostly content to sit back and absorb pressure from that point, particularly after in the second half.

David Suazo came on to help the Italian side counter and it sort of went well — he just simply dribbled past the PSV defense twice (yes, he was faster dribbling than all of their defenders were without the ball), leaving them for dead only to shoot horribly over and wide once and have his attempted well-saved another time. On the other end, PSV had a couple of alarmingly free headers but they blew both chances, and Julio Cesar was up to the task on the shots they put on net, getting down well on two occasion to make important saves. When the whistle blew, Inter and PSV found themselves joint second in Group G behind Fenerbahçe, who picked up a point earlier today and sit top with four points.

Over in Manchester, meanwhile, Roma — unexpectedly without keep Alexander Doni — suffered a tough 1-0 loss in a match that sounds laden with controversy: Both teams had goals ruled out for offside, Roma had a good penalty shout waved away, and Cristiano Ronaldo may or may not have thrown a nasty elbow. Simone Perrotta and Mauro Esposito both missed late chances after Man U were down to 10 men due to a Ronaldo injury, but in the end Wayne Rooney’s pretty 70th minute goal stood, and Roma were left second in the group, tied with Sporting — their next CL opponent — on three points, while Man U climbed clear of the pack with a perfect six points from two matches.

[Note: Since the Roma match was on live TV everywhere, I assume many of you saw it -- I only read about it, so please fill in the many gaps in my reports in the comments.]