Where have the great Italian defenders gone?

It’s a question you often hear. You can understand why – it wasn’t long ago that giants roamed these lands, from Paolo Maldini to Alessandro Nesta, Fabio Cannavaro to Giorgio Chiellini.

The soft power of a long and glorious history of Italian defending was apparent from the way some quarters of the foreign press talked about Inter ahead of the Champions League final, too.

Inter were repeatedly described as a solid defensive unit who could spoil, frustrate, play the dark arts. Simone Inzaghi was Helenio Herrera reborn, it seemed. What they lacked in quality, they could make up for in grinta. That was the idea.

If only. When the Nerazzurri’s Champions League bid came crashing to a humiliating end in Munich on Saturday night, the manner of their thrashing shone a glaring spotlight on pre-existing issues.

For all the attempts to typecast Inter as ‘another defensive Italian side’, the five goals they shipped to PSG came after conceding six to Barcelona and three to Bayern Munich. That is 14 goals in five games.

When it mattered most in the latter knockout stages, Inter’s defence was unable to live up to the standards it had set earlier in the tournament by conceding just twice in 10 games up to the quarter-finals.

A spinal cord of defensive mishaps runs through the skeleton of Inter’s failed Treble bid. A theme that when it mattered most, they failed to deliver.

When it came to the run-in, it was all fine and well keeping clean sheets against Como, Verona and Torino, but when it came to their clearest banana skin on the calendar, they flopped again.

Inter allowed Lazio back into the game twice at San Siro on the penultimate weekend. A 2-2 draw ultimately cost them the title. Two trophies gone.

Make no mistake, PSG were brilliant in Munich. They had meticulously prepared for the challenge of Inter and executed their gameplan to perfection, applying intense pressing to suffocate the Nerazzurri and attacking with such speed and dexterity that a dazed Francesco Acerbi was left ruing that they “were going at double speed.”

Arrigo Sacchi put it neatly. “This is what happens when on one side you have a team that knows what they must do, and on the other side a frightened team without the slightest idea of how to behave.”

That brings us to the individuals. Acerbi has been a superb budget signing for Inter and was heroic against Barcelona with his late leveller. But time waits for no man, and all of his 37 years showed in Munich.

Federico Dimarco’s defensive deficiencies were brutally exposed by Lamine Yamal in the semi-finals. Inzaghi stuck by him and just about got away with it, but there was no such luck this time – the wing-back played everyone onside for the opener and then was nowhere near Desire Doue when the winger’s shot cannoned off his leg and in for the second. It was game over at that point.

When Dimarco was substituted in the second half, the camera repeatedly panned to him sitting on the bench, shaking his head in disappointment and disbelief. He will have some work to do now to restore a reputation.

Alessandro Bastoni is supposed to be the biggest guarantee in the Inter defence, yet he received some of the worst ratings in Sunday’s pagelle. Benjamin Pavard likewise.

No areas of Inter’s performance are immune from criticism. They got it all wrong: the approach, the tactics, the changes, the mentality. Even their fans were comprehensively out-sung. Three trophies gone.

“We lacked courage from the first minute and left too much space for them between the lines,” said Yann Sommer. It was a bad night to be an Inter goalkeeper.

The post-mortem is already under way. What do you make of a side that had a Champions League run for the ages, yet ultimately failed to win anything in a year where they explicitly targeted a Treble?

Inzaghi’s future is the first topic on the agenda. He could not even guarantee in the press conference after the game that he will be in charge for the Club World Cup in two weeks. “I don’t know how to answer that,” he said.

Will that be the last time we see him as Inter coach? Possibly.

Regardless, if they are to bounce back they need to become, at least in part, the team that so many people seemed to think they were.

Whether it is by hiring a new coach, making new signings, or both, Inter must find the elusive big-game defensive resilience that can turn near-misses into historic success.