Real Madrid and Inter Milan face nervy night with Champions League group on knife edge

Spanish and Italian giants face crunch night in Europe as their respective matches against Monchengladbach and Shakhtar will decide whether they reach knockout stage

Borussia Monchengladbach's Marcus Thuram during training ahead of their crucial Champions League match against Real Madrid. EPA

Monchengladbach players during training. EPA

Monchengladbach winger Ibrahima Traore. EPA

Monchengladbach manager Marco Rose. EPA

Monchengladbach players during training. EPA

Monchengladbach defender Matthias Ginter controls the ball. EPA

Monchengladbach goalkeeper Yann Sommer. EPA

Monchengladbach attacker Alassane Plea. EPA

Left to right: Monchengladbach's Breel Embolo, Alassane Plea and Marcus Thuram. EPA

Monchengladbach midfielder Denis Zakaria. EPA

Players joke around Monchengladbach attacker Lars Stindl. EPA

If Borussia Monchengladbach go to Madrid as buoyant as they were in Kiev five weeks ago, it should be decided fairly quickly.

That evening the German club were 4-0 up against Shakhtar Donetsk by half-time. If Shakhtar, who really are the Jekyll and Hyde of this season’s Champions League, blitz Inter Milan as they blitzed Real Madrid back in October – 3-0 at the break – everybody can finally stop biting their nails.

Club football’s premier competition is sometimes thought dull and stagnant through its autumn months, because of a group phase which takes too many games to filter out the good from the ordinary.

Uefa, the designers of the system, are working on reforming it. They may want to look at whatever weird ingredient was slipped into the mix of this season’s Group B.

After five rounds, any two of the four contestants can still go through to the last 16, which is a welcome straw to clasp at for the clubs currently sitting third and fourth. They were widely expected to finish first and second. They are Madrid and Inter. Both are playing last-gasp catch-up on a rollercoaster that has defied all forecasts.

In all three opening matchdays, points were grasped and lost with goals scored in the last 10 minutes; Monchengladbach averaged a goal every 18 minutes in their two matches against Shakhtar.

Yet in Milan on Wednesday night, Shakhtar could conceivably take their place in the knockouts with only a draw against Inter, a club who have a fair idea of how hot and cold the Ukrainians blow.

In August, they met in a Europa League semi-final, and Inter won 5-0. In October, Shakhtar cemented their place at the top of barmy, bewildering Group B by holding the Inter of Romelu Lukaku and Lautaro Martinez to 0-0 thanks to a 19-year-old goalkeeper, Anatoliy Trubin, promoted from third-choice to first because a Covid-19 crisis had ruled out other keepers.

Beat Inter on Wednesday evening and Trubin’s troops would finish top if a Shakhtar win combines with Monchengladbach taking fewer than three points from their trip to the Spanish capital.

The complex arithmetic exerts greater pressure on the so-called ‘giants’ of La Liga and Serie A. Madrid can still guarantee progress if they win, but in a group where the leaders, Monchengladbach, are just three points ahead of Inter at the bottom, it will be a night when coaching staff in Milan and Madrid are constantly tuned to events elsewhere.

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Gallery: Shakhtar Donetsk 2 Real Madrid 0

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Having collected only one point from their first two games, Madrid have been mostly on the back foot. Their manager, Zinedine Zidane, has called every game since "a final"; the back-to-back "finals" against Inter launched Madrid's recovery, with a 2-0 win in Milan and a 3-2 victory at home. Then came Kiev: Shakhtar 2, Real Madrid 0, the Ukrainians' second victory over the Spanish champions.

The Real midfielder Casemiro spoke on Tuesday,and peppered almost every phrase with the word "final". “Everyone in the dressing-room and in the club knows this is a final,” he said of the visit of Monchengladbach, “and at this club, we win finals.” Under Zidane, Madrid have played in nine finals, taking in European and Spanish Super Cups, and won all of them.

That includes three successive Champions League finals, up to 2018. Madrid were the original governors of the European Cup and they have mastered its modern version, the Champions League, like nobody else. Should they not climb out of third place tonight, they will make unwanted history. Madrid have never been eliminated in a group phase.

Monchengladbach, by contrast, have never progressed beyond a Champions League group. “This is not a ‘small’ team, they are the group leaders,” said Casemiro of the free-scoring Germans, “but it is in our hands to go through.”

That message was heard loud and clear in Milan, where Inter manager Antonio Conte needs not only a win against Shakhtar but a positive result, either way, in Madrid.

News of Real-Borussia drawing would extinguish Inter’s morale. “We can’t think about what’s happening in the other game,” said Conte, warning his players against imagining that Monchengladbach and Madrid might settle for a convenient stalemate if they know Inter are well ahead in the later stages of the evening.

But every actor in the drama that is Group B should know by now that nothing can be stage-managed or second-guessed. “A week ago, we were dead and buried,” said Conte, “and now we can glimpse a shaft of light.”

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Gallery: Real Madrid 3 Inter Milan 2