Inter survive Bastoni red card to beat Shakhtar after shaky start
Carlos Augusto's second-half strike gave 10-man Inter a first Champions League win of the autumn, but the performance exposed how far Cristian Chivu's reshaped side still has to travel.
Carlos Augusto scored the only goal as Inter beat Shakhtar Donetsk 1-0 at San Siro, a result that arrived despite Alessandro Bastoni's dismissal and a first half in which Shakhtar were plainly the better side, Football Italia reported.
The win was overdue. Inter had lost both their previous Champions League group-phase fixtures, against Real Madrid and Club Brugge, and Cristian Chivu went into the match without Lautaro Martinez, Curtis Jones, John Stones and Benjamin Pavard through injury, all while preparing for the Milan derby at the weekend.
Why the back three never settled
Chivu's response to the injury list was structural. Bastoni, normally a left-sided centre-back, was moved into the middle of a back three, Ange-Yoan Bonny was picked as the lone striker, and Djed Spence was given his first start. It was an improvised shape built around absence rather than design, and Shakhtar exploited it.
The visitors, unbeaten in the competition going into the game after a draw at PSV Eindhoven and a win over AEK Athens, pressed Inter's rebuilt backline into mistakes. Kaua Elias robbed a visibly rusty Spence near the edge of the box, and the resulting shot was deflected off Manuel Akanji, forcing Josep Martinez into a smart stop and sending Shakhtar into a string of corners. Valeriy Bondar's header from one of those set pieces had to be cleared off the line.
Inter did carve out early chances of their own through transition, the kind of football that has defined their best moments under Chivu. Petar Sucic intercepted a loose pass from Oleh Ocheretko to release Marcus Thuram for a drive that was tipped around the post, and Bonny stung the goalkeeper's gloves after controlling a floated Akanji pass. But those were isolated moments inside a half that Football Italia described Shakhtar as finishing the stronger side, and they carried that momentum into the restart.
Ten men, one moment of quality
The turning point was ill-discipline rather than tactics. Bastoni picked up two yellow cards inside two minutes, the first for a tussle with Alisson Santana and the second for shoving Ocheretko at a corner, reducing Inter to ten men in the 68th minute. For a side already struggling to control the game, it looked like it would confirm a third straight continental defeat.
Instead, Inter scored almost immediately after going down to ten. Substitute Henrikh Mkhitaryan, facing his former club, played a pass from the centre circle to send Carlos Augusto clear. The forward controlled it on his chest, drew the goalkeeper out, and finished with the outside of his boot from 14 yards in the 77th minute. It was a single moment of quality against the run of play, exactly the kind of individual contribution Inter had lacked across their previous two results.
Chivu's triple substitution on the hour mark, made before Bastoni's sending-off, had already shown intent to change the picture, and Thuram's curled effort on the counter-attack shortly after the changes suggested the introductions were working even before the numerical disadvantage arrived. Playing a man light then forced Inter into a more compact defensive block for the closing stages, conceding territory and the ball but relying on transitions and set-piece discipline at the back to protect the lead.
Why Shakhtar still had the better chances
Shakhtar's response to going behind was to push numbers forward, and they created the clearest openings of the closing stages. Josep Martinez produced two important saves in quick succession, first getting down to turn a deflected effort from Newertton around the post, then reacting to deny a close-range header from Mykola Matviyenko. Mkhitaryan also spurned a chance to make the game safe, dragging a shot wide from a Thuram cutback after a heavy first touch in the 84th minute.
The shot count told its own story: Shakhtar finished with 12 attempts to Inter's 13, but it was the Ukrainian side who held 55% of possession and forced five shots on target against the home side's four. Those numbers, measuring shot volume and accuracy rather than danger created, undersell how often Inter's ten men were pinned back after the goal, relying on individual saves rather than control of the game to see out the win.
Football Italia's account makes clear this was a victory built on resilience and a single decisive pass rather than a reversal of the pattern that had cost Inter in their previous two Champions League outings. The result lifts some immediate pressure, but the underlying issues that let Shakhtar dominate large spells with ten and eleven men on the pitch remain for Chivu to address before the Milan derby.