The one-minute break between the two halves of extra time was the strangest, most surreal minute in football history.
The players didn't receive tactical instructions; they received emergency aid.
Physios ran onto the pitch with water bottles, energy gels, and cramping spray, treating the field like a battlefield triage unit.
On the Inter sideline, Coach Chivu wasn't yelling at his assistants anymore.
He was just staring at the pitch, a silent, smoldering volcano of tension.
His counterpart on the Roma bench was doing the same.
All the tactics, all the plans, had been burned away in the glorious, chaotic fire of the match.
This was now in the hands of the football gods.
The players, meanwhile, were operating in a state of delirious exhaustion.
"I can't feel my left leg," Federico Dimarco announced to Denzel Dumfries as they shared a water bottle. "It's just a rumor at this point. A suggestion of a leg."
