Inter left the Stadio Pierluigi Penzo with a 0-2 win over home side Venezia, and the margin was delivered in the most clinical of fashions: two own goals in the space of three minutes, both in the final quarter, both arriving after Chivu's side had already done the hard work of suffocating any Venetian ambition.
The match's most telling moment came not at 79' or 82' but at 29', when a Venezia goal by Lion Lauberbach was ruled out by VAR. The cancellation meant the hosts, who had fashioned what appeared to be a lead, were sent back to square one — and they never found another way through. That reversal, invisible in the final scoreline, was the hinge on which the afternoon turned.
Inter coach Cristian Chivu made three substitutions at half-time, bringing on Manuel Akanji, Hakan Çalhanoğlu, and Nicolo Barella simultaneously. The triple change reshaped the second half entirely. Barella, Inter's midfielder, was booked at 56' — a sign of how involved he had become in the contest — but the Nerazzurri's grip on the game only tightened from there. When Venezia defender Matias Moreno turned the ball into his own net at 79', Inter had their opener. Venezia defender Redouane Halhal followed at 82', doubling the lead with another own goal. Two goals, three minutes, both unintended: the scoreline had a grim symmetry to it.
The key individual in Inter's victory is harder to isolate precisely because the decisive contributions were, technically, Venezia's own. But the half-time triple substitution by Chivu — three starters replaced at once, including the introduction of Çalhanoğlu and Barella — was the intervention that changed the texture of the game. Barella's presence in midfield, even while picking up a yellow card, gave Inter a different quality of control in the second period. The goals that followed were the consequence of sustained pressure that the changes enabled.
Venezia's evening was defined by what they could not hold. The VAR cancellation at 29' was the cruelest moment, but Davide Nicola's side had arrived at this fixture having taken three points from their last five matches, and the structural fragility was already visible. Four substitutions across the second half — Busio on at 61', Bašić and Yeboah at 68', Haps at 76' — suggested Nicola was searching for something the personnel could not provide. Venezia finished the match without a goal to their name and with two scored against them by their own players: the scoreline is not a distortion of the performance, it is an accurate portrait of a side under serious strain.
Inter arrived at the Penzo having won four and drawn one of their last five matches, conceding just seven goals across that run. This result extends that sequence without interruption: the Nerazzurri have now won three consecutive matches, keeping their goals-against total in those three games to two. Venezia, by contrast, have taken three points from their last five, and this defeat — added to the loss at Genoa three days earlier — means the last three matches have yielded one win, no draws, and two defeats. The trajectory is not improving.
A month from now, this match will be remembered as the afternoon Venezia scored twice for Inter.