Inter to face Barca with treble in sights after UCL triumph over Bayern

Lautaro Martinez scored in a fifth consecutive Champions League match and Benjamin Pavard made his former team pay to help Inter hold Bayern Munich to a 2-2 draw Wednesday and reach the semifinals for the second time in three seasons.

Thanks to a 4-3 win on aggregate, the Nerazzurri, who lost to Manchester City in the 2022-23 Champions League final, will face Barcelona for a return ticket to the final in Munich.

Inter and Barcelona are both in contention for continental trebles. The Italians famously beat the Catalans en route to winning their only other treble in 2009-10.

Barcelona will host the first leg April 30 and travel to Milan for the reverse fixture on May 6.

Bayern took a deserved lead in the 52nd minute when Harry Kane arrowed a shot into the bottom left corner. The goal leveled the tie 2-2 on aggregate, temporarily undoing the damage of their 2-1 first-leg home defeat.

But Inter quickly responded, converting off a pair of corner kicks in the space of three minutes to take a 2-1 lead. Martinez reacted first to a favorable bounce in the 6-yard box, and Pavard headed in his first goal for Inter since joining the club from Bayern in August 2023.

Eric Dier gave Bayern a lifeline in the 76th minute, but his floating header from an acute angle made no difference to the final result.

"We've had a packed schedule with loads of matches, one after the other, but we don't give up," Martinez told Amazon Prime. "We have personality and heart and intelligence. We were definitely on the back foot at times today, but we showed again today that we can do great things.

"We think about winning everything at the start of every season, because if we don't, then we shouldn't play this sport. That's our mentality."

Bayern were hoping to play for a seventh Champions League title in front of their own fans as they did in the 2011-12 final. The Germans ended up losing that game to Chelsea in a penalty shootout.

In their quest for a second treble in club history, Inter have a three-point lead atop the Serie A standings and are in the Coppa Italia semifinals.

Head coach Simone Inzaghi is just the second Inter boss to have reached the Champions League semifinals on more than one occasion with the side. Legendary manager Helenio Herrera, the godfather of the defensive system known as Catenaccio, led Inter to four consecutive semifinal appearances from 1963-67, winning the European Cup in 1965.