There he was, again, in that position just inside the box to the right, ready to do untold damage, ready to pull Barcelona back into the game.

Lamine Yamal was bearing down on goal with just Inter’s Carlos Augusto in front of him. Seven minutes remained on the clock, an extraordinary game – an extraordinary tie – was in the depths of extra-time. 

Yamal was surely going to equalise. He opened up his body and bent his shot around Augusto, only for it to flash wide of the post.

In real time, it looked like the Barca youngster had been surprisingly off kilter. This would have been understandable, perhaps the result of two physically draining games of football in one of the Champions League’s greatest ever semis.

It was only on second viewing, and with a different camera angle, that it became clear Yamal was not at fault at all. Yann Sommer had, in fact, pulled off a sublime save.

That stop exemplified Sommer’s performance, not just over this game, nor the one in Barcelona last week, but across his two seasons at Inter Milan.

Sommer’s acrobatics drew comparisons with Nerazzurri legend Julio Cesar’s similar (ish) save against Lionel Messi from the same fixture at the same stage 15 years ago.

Then, the Brazilian’s low dive kept the score level amid a never-ending onslaught from the Catalans at Camp Nou.

Cesar’s importance to Jose Mourinho’s Treble side has somewhat faded with the passage of time. As a goalkeeper, he has never received the same level of acclaim as Wesley Sneijder, Diego Milito, Maicon, Samuel Eto’o nor even Walter Samuel.

Yet Cesar kept six clean sheets during Inter’s journey to their last European crown, and Mourinho knew how vital he was, rating him as the best in the world during that era.

The comparison is also there with Sommer. 

In a team more famed for the collective than individuals, the Swiss stopper has gone under the radar of many outsiders.

While flowers were given – and rightly so – to Lautaro Martinez, Denzel Dumfries, Marcus Thuram, Francesco Acerbi and others over the course of the two games against Barca, it was Sommer who stood imperious above the rest.

The ghost of Cesar was not lost on those within Italy, however. La Gazzetta dello Sport wrote that the Brazilian was ‘reincarnated’ at San Siro on a rain-soaked Tuesday evening.

Despite conceding six goals over the tie, Sommer produced seven saves in the second leg; 14 across the two games; two performances of a lifetime.

“It was a special save,” he said in the minutes after the match. “I’ll remember it for the rest of my life. I’m happy it didn’t go in.”

In his interview with CBS Sports in America, during which he was kissed on the forehead by an appreciative Nicolo Barella, Sommer opened up a bit more.

“We saw a lot of situations where Lamine Yamal was coming inside, shifting quickly and shooting,” he explained. “In the end I was speculating a little bit, but it looks good.”

Despite winning 94 caps for Switzerland and playing for Bayern Munich, the two semi-final games represented 36-year-old’s Sommer’s coming-out party.

For a club who, like Juventus in the 2010s, has become known as shrewd operators in the transfer market and injecting life into players most sides had discarded, Sommer has gone down as one of Inter’s best deals in recent years.

When sporting director at Juventus, Beppe Marotta produced a string of impressive signings. Marotta signed Andrea Pirlo, Paul Pogba and Sami Khedira for free; bought Arturo Vidal and Carlos Tevez for around €10million each and Andrea Barzagli for a ludicrous €600k

At Inter, Marotta has again cornered the free agent market, signing Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Hakan Calhanoglu, Edin Dzeko, Acerbi and Thuram for nothing. All have played key roles in bringing Inter to a second final in three years.

Sommer was signed for just over €6m two years ago as a replacement for the outgoing Andrea Onana, who departed for Manchester United in a €50m deal. 

Onana had signed a year prior for, you guessed it, nothing.

Of all Marotta’s best buys at Juve and Inter, the Onana-Sommer upgrade is perhaps his finest hour.

Onana is, of course, a good keeper and was arguably worth the money United paid for him at the time. Yet his stint at Old Trafford has been hamstrung through a mixture of a constantly revolving door of defenders in front of him and shot confidence amidst a litany of costly errors. 

Sommer has, meanwhile, been so good and so reliable for Inter that Onana is now nothing more than a distant memory to Interisti. Forty-five clean sheets in all competitions since arriving from Bayern tells its own story.

Now a Champions League final awaits. For Inter and many of the survivors from 2023, it offers a chance to avenge the loss to Manchester City and sit atop the European mountain for a fourth time.

For Sommer, it is a chance to show why Bayern made a mistake in letting him go. 

And where will the final take place? Munich.