Ageing team mourns the death of a glorious dream

Reach a certain age and it isn't uncommon to develop a greater interest in history.

- RICHARD JOLLY

Inter Milan's old-timers made it: the heaviest defeat ever in a European Cup or Champions League final, a rout still greater than the spectacular scorelines in 1960, 1974, 1989 and 1994, a thrashing that removed two of AC Milan’s routs from the record books.

This was a performance that will echo through the ages. Not by them, however, but to them. Inter conceded three goals to teenagers, Desire Doue’s double followed by the historic fifth from Senny Mayulu.

Inter are old. It isn’t a secret. Barcelona and Bayern Munich probably noticed it, and Arsenal and Manchester City before them. Yet only Paris Saint-Germain succeeded in making them look old. The newest champions of Europe won a generation game so emphatically and dramatically it felt like a case of elder abuse.

In a Champions League final of opposites – European Cup winners in the 1960s against the club not founded until 1970, bargain buys against big spenders, old against young – the team built for the future discovered their time is now. The side trying to resist the passing of time were overwhelmed by the waves of Parisian attacks. The biggest game of their lives proved one of the worst. It finished with them stood, heads bowed, in front of an emptying away end.