Juventus 2 - Inter Milan 3: Initial reaction and random observations

The second Derby d’Italia of the 2025-26 season basically ended in the 42nd minute on Sunday.

You can look at all the fireworks that happened after that and disagree with the first sentence that I just wrote, but that’s what happened. Why? Because Federico La Penna, a Serie A referee who is far from the best that this once-great crew of match officials in Italy has to offer, made himself the star of the show.

It wasn’t for any sort of great call.

It was the opposite of that.

Juventus lost 3-2 to league leaders Inter Milan at San Siro on Saturday night. The score feels like a secondary piece to the puzzle considering just how much things turned on a dime when La Penna showed Pierre Kalulu a second yellow card for something that he thought was worth of a red and sending Juventus down to 10 men. In actuality, it was pretty much the opposite of that when you went back and saw more and more replays, even though many of us didn’t even need to see a single replay to know that it wasn’t close to being worthy of what happened. Thanks to Alessandro Bastoni’s flop of all flops, begging for a card and then celebrating Kalulu getting sent off like it was a last-minute goal in the Champions League final, Juventus’ hopes of beating Inter for a second time this season went up in smoke in the 42nd minute.

Kalulu didn’t deserve to get sent off against Inter. Hell, he didn’t even deserve the first yellow card he was shown 10 minutes earlier. No matter what you think of the pass that Fabio Miretti attempted right before the “foul” Kalulu made on Bastoni — and yeah, it was a pretty bad pass attempt from the young Italian midfielder — those who actually think that’s a foul on Kalulu are just as wrong as La Penna was.

But this is the culture of football that Serie A (and other leagues around Europe) has created all by themselves. They reward this kind of behavior where you can trick the referee into thinking there is something wrong when, like Kalulu, there’s absolutely nothing. A 6-foot-3 center back who is nearly 200 pounds like Bastoni is should not be flopping around after minimal contact like he’s a fish fresh out of the water after getting hooked.

Even with it feeling like 12 against 10 for pretty much the entire second half, Juventus fought. They freakin’ fought until the very end. When it comes to the effort that Luciano Spalletti’s team put forward, you cannot fault them at all. They fought before Kalulu got sent off and were arguably the better side in the first half, and they certainly fought after going down to 10 men. Then they fought once Inter went ahead 2-1 on Francesco Pio Esposito’s latest reminder that he is the future of the Italian national team, if not a pretty good player to begin with in the present. Manuel Locatelli’s stunner seven minutes before second-half stoppage time felt like the reward for all of the battling that Juve did.

It was a reflection of this team, their manager and just how they were playing to get something out of it when there were so many things going against them between the refereeing blunders and the sheer volume on nonsense that Inter players were getting involved in.

A point felt totally like a win when Locatelli’s shot hit the back of the net. They deserved it for how much they stuck with it and fought through everything.

Then … it was all gone on the cusp of stoppage time.

That is not what Juventus deserved on this night. Far from it. Juventus deserved a point. I wholeheartedly believe they could have won this game if it was actually 11 against 11. Juve were going right up against the team that is the clear-cut favorite for the Scudetto this season and giving them a game.

That is before Kalulu got sent off, of course. Then everything changed — and not for the better.

Or maybe it’s just best if I let Romeo talk for me for a second here …

Refereeing mistakes going against Juventus. Refereeing mistakes benefiting Inter. I’m not one to really get into the whole world of conspiracy theories, but it really is hard to ignore how these things keep happening in football.

It’s not a one-off occurrence or anything close to it. These are things that keep happening.

And until something changes, then we can’t just keep brushing these things off as the new normal in this league.

Juventus lost a game. That happens. But this is a night that the football is far from being the main thing that should be talked about. That in of itself is unfortunate because the football is why we keep coming back win, lose or draw.

RANDOM THOUGHTS AND OBSERVATIONS

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