Inter Milan need another comeback against Real Madrid to get back on track in Champions League

Antonio Conte's team have made it a habit of fighting back after falling behind all season

Real Madrid's Sergio Ramos in action with Inter Milan's Lautaro Martinez. Real won the Champions League group match 3-2 on November 3. Reuters

nternazionale midfielder Arturo Vidal. EPA

Inter Milan's Croatian midfielder Marcelo Brozovic. AFP

Real Madrid defender Sergio Ramos heads the ball to make it 2-0. AFP

Inter Milan's Croatian midfielder Marcelo Brozovic and Real Madrid's German midfielder Toni Kroos fall down. AFP

Real Madrid's Spanish defender Sergio Ramos celebrates his goal. AFP

Real Madrid defender Raphael Varane vies for the ball against Internazionale's Ivan Perisic. EPA

Madrid's striker Karim Benzema in action against Internazionale's Stefan De Vrij. EPA

Real Madrid goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois reacts after Ivan Perisic scores to make it 2-2. EPA

Real Madrid's winger Rodrygo celebrates after scoring the to make it 3-2. EPA

Inter Milan's Samir Handanovic after Real Madrid's Rodrygo scores their third goal. Reuters

Real Madrid goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois in action. EPA

Real Madrid's Karim Benzema. Reuters

Inter Milan's Chilean midfielder Arturo Vidal vies with Real Madrid's Belgian forward Eden Hazard. AFP

On the evidence of the season so far, Antonio Conte’s Internazionale are never better than with a deficit to chase.

They were two-nil down – again – on Sunday at Torino, before four second-half goals kept them within touching distance of Serie A’s top four. Conte likes to think the comeback reflex is active in the Champions League, too, because Inter desperately need to correct a deficit on Wednesday.

They host Real Madrid in San Siro in Group B. That’s B for bewildering. Halfway through the fixtures, its most illustrious members, Inter and Madrid, sit uncomfortably in fourth and third place, and as they peer up at the teams above them in the qualifying positions, Borussia Monchengladbach and Shakhtar Donetsk, it would be unwise to try to forecast who has the greater staying-power.

The rollercoaster story so far has Shakhtar scoring three times in Madrid within 45 minutes of matchday one, and then conceding six times at home to Monchengladbach on matchday three.

The German club, who host Shakhtar on Wednesday, are not exactly running to clockwork efficiency either. They would be on maximum points, rather than their five, had they not conceded very late equalisers in their matches against Inter and Madrid.

At Inter, on matchday one, Monchengladbach led until Romelu Lukaku’s 90th minute strike. Conte has bellowed from the touchline through several adventures like that since September. Fiorentina, on the opening day of the Serie A season, led at Inter until Lukaku’s 88th minute equaliser on the way to a 4-3 win for Conte’s erratics.

San Siro has since seen Inter conceding twice within the first 16 minutes of the Milan derby and Parma taking a 2-0 lead before Inter roused themselves and drew 2-2.

The next outing was a trip to Madrid, who took a 2-0 lead and – true to habit – Inter pulled two goals back. Ten minutes from full-time, Rodrygo then salvaged Real's dishevelled Champions League campaign with the winning goal.

The see-saw moved to Torino at the weekend, Inter going 1-0 down after Alexis Sanchez carelessly gave away the ball and 2-0 down when Ashley Young conceded a penalty.

Alexis and Lukaku then engineered a recovery. Note the names: all three of the former Manchester United players expressly recruited by Conte in the last 18 months were steering the latest rollercoaster, although of the trio only Lukaku is inked in to start the make-or-break rematch with Madrid.

With just two points so far, a defeat would leave Inter all but reconciled to trying to clamber into the Europa League and it would hurt Conte in an especially sensitive area.

He is not a head coach who lives comfortably with giving away leads, nor with repeated suggestions that, for all his managerial successes in domestic leagues – three titles with Juventus, one with Chelsea – his teams tend to be far frailer in Europe.

This is Conte’s fifth Champions League campaign as a manager. Two of the previous four ended at the group stage. Only once has he taken a side beyond the last 16, when his Juventus were beaten 4-0 on aggregate by Bayern Munich in the 2012/13 quarter-finals.

Conte did guide Inter to last season’s Europa League final, where on another rollercoaster evening they lost 3-2 to Sevilla. But they were only in that competition having been relegated from the Champions League, finishing behind Barcelona and Borussia Dortmund in a tough group.

This time, according to Conte, “we are in the hardest of all the groups. We will need another seven more points if not another three wins from our three games. Against Madrid it will be like a final.”

The visitors are missing Sergio Ramos, Karim Benzema and Federico Valverde with injury and the natural understudies for Ramos in central defence and Benzema at centre-forward, Eder Militao and Luka Jovic are also unavailable. Conte sees little blessing in that. “I don’t think Madrid can be too worried. They have a big squad.”

Three weeks ago, that squad proved its depth, substitutes Vinicius Junior and Rodrygo combining for the late winning goal against Inter.

Conte prefers to remember the preceding 45 minutes, in which one of the comebacks that have typified Inter’s season was rallied, 2-0 down to 2-2. “We know from the first game that if we want it, we can get a big result. We just need to improve on certain situations, stay humble and keep our concentration up.”