Inter left Unipol Domus with three points and a clean sheet, the margin supplied entirely by a single early goal — Hakan Çalhanoğlu's ninth-minute finish, assisted by Inter midfielder Nicolo Barella, settled a match that Cagliari spent the remaining eighty-one minutes trying, and failing, to unpick.
The decisive passage came before most of the crowd had settled. Barella's involvement released Çalhanoğlu, who converted to make it 1-0, and from that moment Chivu's Inter were playing a game they know well: protect the lead, manage the tempo, rotate the squad. The goal arrived at a point when Inter's early-season rhythm was already established — four goals scored and one conceded in their opening Serie A fixture against Monza — and the Nerazzurri carried that assurance into Sardinia. Cagliari coach Fabio Pisacane's side had no answer in the first half, and the structural response came only at the interval's edge.
Çalhanoğlu's contribution extended beyond the goal itself. He was the axis around which Inter's midfield operated for the first hour, and his withdrawal at the 65th minute — alongside Petar Sučić and Pio Esposito, replaced by Piotr Zielinski, Curtis Jones, and Marcus Thuram respectively — was the kind of triple change that signals a coach managing a squad across a long campaign rather than chasing a second goal. Five substitutions in total across the match, including John Stones on for Manuel Akanji at 68', confirmed Inter were content to see the game out rather than extend it.
Cagliari's difficulty was structural as much as individual. Pisacane had already made three substitutions by the 57th minute — Raphael Kofler, Alieu Fadera, and Kevin Carlos Omoruyi introduced simultaneously — which suggests the first-half performance had not satisfied him. The problem was that the changes came in response to a deficit rather than as a tactical evolution from a position of parity. Daniel Maldini was withdrawn at the 78th minute, and Omoruyi, one of the players brought on to inject urgency, collected a yellow card in the 88th, which encapsulates the frustration of Cagliari's evening: energy without penetration, effort without reward. Two yellow cards across the match, no goals, and a home crowd that had seen their side win in Parma on the opening weekend now watching a different kind of performance entirely.
The form windows tell a coherent story for both clubs. Inter have won their first two Serie A fixtures, scoring five and conceding one across those matches. Cagliari, across their last three results in all competitions — including a Coppa Italia win over Arezzo and the Serie A victory at Parma — have now suffered this defeat after what had been a promising opening. The table, at this early stage, places Cagliari ninth on three points and Inter fifth on three points, though the gap in goal difference already hints at the difference in ambition between the two sides' starts.
Cagliari can point to competitive performances in both league outings, but a side that kept a clean sheet at Parma found no equivalent defensive solidity at home against opponents who needed only nine minutes to establish the margin that would prove sufficient.
Inter, for their part, secured victory here with the defensive organisation Chivu has established. The Nerazzurri did not need to be at their most expansive to win here; they needed only to be disciplined, and they were.
A month from now, this match will be remembered as the one where Inter demonstrated that winning ugly, early, and efficiently is as much a part of their identity as the more elaborate victories.