Inter left Como's Stadio Giuseppe Sinigaglia with a 3-4 victory on Sunday evening, and the margin was constructed almost entirely between the 45th and 49th minutes — three goals in the final breath of the first half and one more four minutes into the second that turned a tight contest into a lead Inter never surrendered.
The match had been goalless until the 36th minute, when the Nerazzurri broke the deadlock through a composed finish. Como, managed by Cesc Fàbregas, responded immediately: two goals in the 45th minute — one of them almost certainly arriving in added time — drew the hosts level and, briefly, ahead. The scoreboard read 2-1 to Como at the interval, a lead that lasted precisely four minutes of the second half. Inter midfielder Hakan Calhanoglu and the Nerazzurri's attacking unit had other ideas, and by the 49th minute the visitors were back in front at 3-2. A fifth goal at the 58th minute extended the advantage to 4-2, and although Como pulled one back at the 72nd minute to make it 3-4, Chivu's Inter absorbed the pressure, survived a VAR-confirmed penalty converted at the 89th minute, and closed out a result that their second-half control largely merited.
The half-time triple substitution — both sides made changes at the 46th minute, Inter sending on three players simultaneously — reshaped the contest structurally. Chivu's decision to introduce three fresh legs at once is the kind of intervention that looks obvious in retrospect and courageous in the moment; within three minutes the lead had changed hands again. The 56th minute brought four more changes across both benches, and the match's disciplinary temperature rose in parallel: ten yellow cards were distributed throughout the match, with two players cautioned in the final minute alone.
Two Inter players shared the top individual rating of 8.9 on the night. One contributed two goals, the other one — between them they account for three of Inter's four. The third player rated 8.5 also scored twice, meaning Inter's top three performers by rating were responsible for all four goals. That concentration of output in a small group of individuals is the clearest explanation for why Chivu's side won: their best players performed at the level their ratings suggest, and Como's did not match them consistently enough across 90 minutes.
Como's evening illustrated the cost of defensive fragility at the highest level of concentration. Fàbregas's side had arrived into this fixture on the back of three wins in their previous four league matches, including a 5-0 dismantling of Pisa and a 2-1 result against AS Roma. The attacking quality was evident — three goals against Inter is not a trivial return — but the two goals conceded in the space of the 45th minute, one of them almost certainly a lapse in concentration in the final seconds of the half, undid the defensive discipline that had made their recent run possible. The head-to-head record now reads Inter wins two, Como wins zero from two meetings, and the pattern is consistent: the Nerazzurri have found ways to punish Como's structural openings both times.
For Inter, the three points consolidate a run of form that now reads three wins from their last four Serie A fixtures, with the only blemish a draw against Fiorentina away from home. For Como, the defeat ends a sequence of three consecutive league wins and returns them to the position of a side that can hurt the best teams in Italy but cannot yet hold a lead against them.
A month from now, this match will be remembered as the night Inter won a seven-goal game by scoring three times in four minutes either side of half-time — and by the time Como had worked out how to stop them, the contest was already settled.