Inter returns to victory after a complicated week and does so with a 0-2 win on the field of Pisa. The decisive factor was a brace from Lautaro Martinez, who resolved a match that was not easy and risked becoming even more complicated in the final minutes. As usual, let’s look at the five things we learned from Pisa-Inter.

1) After two well-played but lost matches, Inter delivers a much grittier, less brilliant performance… and brings home the win. Easy joke: maybe it would have been better to play badly in Madrid too. But the point is another: this is the typical victory that strong teams achieve, on a tough field, against a physical, organized Pisa that had conceded just two goals at home. When others do it, we talk about character, solidity, pragmatism. When Inter does it, why shouldn’t it be good enough?

2) As symbolic as it gets: captain Lautaro Martinez decides the match. There was a lot of talk about him this week, he was under the spotlight for every possible reason… And he responded as true captains do: a brace, reaching 163 goals with the Inter shirt and becoming the sole top scorer in Serie A. We leave the chatter outside, he delivers the facts.

3) In Madrid, the substitutes made no impact; today, the opposite happened. Inter shifted gears in the second half thanks to: Zielinski, increasingly integrated, clean and brilliant; Pio Esposito, who provided a decisive assist and continues to grow; Diouf, who once again offered very interesting flashes, a sign of a player gaining confidence. An effective management of substitutions, finally.

4) Lots of curiosity around Luis Henrique. He is not yet the player who breaks open the match; in fact, he immediately made a mistake with a risky back pass. But after that, he settled down, got organized, tried some vertical passes and didn’t force plays out of rhythm. Not much, but something: timid signs, a passing grade that serves as a starting point.

5) Meanwhile, Inter keeps pace and stays in the leading group. You win a match you couldn’t afford to drop, do your job, and breathe after two undeserved defeats. And now everything becomes very interesting: after the Coppa Italia comes the sprint Como-Liverpool-Supercoppa which will tell us a lot, perhaps a great deal, about how truly competitive this Inter can be.