Francisco Conceição was dead, as he recalls it, but the chance wasn’t, the cross from his teammate Andrea Cambiaso only cleared to the edge of the box. Randal Kolo Muani tamed the ball and retained it as he was assailed by five Inter defenders who arrived one at a time like henchmen in a Hollywood movie: allowing him to overcome each of them in turn.

He evaded Hakan Calhanoglu with a half-step backwards, leaving the Turkey captain to fall under his own momentum, held off Nicolò Barella, dragged the ball back under his boot to spin away from Henrikh Mkhitaryan, flicked it across Francesco Acerbi with the outside of his boot and then poked it with a toe beyond Carlos Augusto and into the path of Conceição.

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An assist so good it could pull you back from the afterlife. Oh fine, we all know Conceição was only using a figure of speech when he described himself as “morto” in a post-game interview, conveying the exhaustion he had felt right there, in the 74th minute of a fervid, oscillating, and up to that point inexplicably goalless Derby d’Italia. He hid it well as he took a touch on his right foot before sweeping with his left into the bottom corner.

Allianz Stadium erupted. Juventus supporters had not seen their team beat Inter here since 2022. The stadium announcer delivered heavy-handed reminders of Juventus’s historical dominance during team introductions, but this decade has so far belonged to the Nerazzurri. Reigning Serie A champions, with a further league win, two Coppa Italia triumphs and a Champions League final appearance since 2020-21, Inter kicked off on Sunday knowing victory would take them back to the top of the table.

They played like it in the first half, dominating the ball and repeatedly opening up Juventus’s defence. Michele Di Gregorio did well to keep out an overhead kick from Mehdi Taremi, but Denzel Dumfries and Lautaro Martínez missed the target from straightforward chances. Juventus posed some threat on the break, Conceição and Nicolás González forcing a smart double save from Yann Sommer, but there was no doubting which team was on top.

That changed after the interval. Emerging from the tunnel, Thiago Motta told Dazn’s sideline reporter that Juventus needed to win more challenges and make better decisions with the ball. If that sounded too simple then maybe it was, because his players did both things and now looked the more threatening – right up until Marcus Thuram came on for Inter and almost immediately set up Dumfries again. His shot this time was on target, but Di Gregorio pushed it on to the post.

An illusion. Thuram, Inter’s best attacker this season, has been sidelined with an ankle injury and still did not appear to be moving fluidly. Across the pitch, Inter looked surprisingly tired for a team who – unlike Juventus – had not played in midweek.

Or perhaps that should not surprise us at all. Inter’s starting XI had an average age of 30 years and 306 days, according to Opta, the oldest they have fielded in a Derby d’Italia since the league went to three points for a win. Juventus’s was more than five years younger on average.

Nor was this game any sort of outlier. Inter have fielded Serie A’s oldest teams all season, and Juventus the second-youngest. The Nerazzurri, furthermore, have used the second-fewest players of any team in the division. Watching them fade in Turin, it was natural to wonder whether those numbers are starting to catch up to them.

More likely that was just one piece of the puzzle. One of Motta’s favourite phrases, repeated after Juventus’s 2-1 Champions League playoff round first-leg win over PSV on Tuesday night, is “nel calcio conta tutto” – everything has an impact on the football pitch.

Some interventions are more obvious than others. Signing Kolo Muani on loan from Paris Saint-Germain this January has drastically upgraded Juventus’s attack. The Frenchman had scored five goals in his first three appearances for the club, and his assist here in the fourth was as impactful as any of them. He has already displaced Dusan Vlahovic as the team’s first-choice No 9.

An explosive runner and proficient dribbler, he interprets the role very differently to the Serbian. That, in turn, has a knock-on impact for Juventus’s tactics, encouraging them to lean into a more direct, fast-break approach. Until now, they have had the second-highest possession percentage of any team in Serie A – just as Motta’s Bologna team did last season. But Sunday’s game was the third in a row when Juventus have had under 50% of the ball, and the fourth in a row they have won, their longest-such run all season.

Perhaps that is only a coincidence, and also reflects the nature of their opponents. Or maybe Motta is becoming more pragmatic. Certainly, the Italian media have been quick to observe how his Bologna team went on a run at this exact point last season – winning six out of seven games from the start of February and drawing the other, against Milan. It was a crucial phase in their path toward Champions League qualification.

Might we look back on Conceição’s goal as one of the pivotal moments of this season? The game finished 1-0 to Juventus, lifting them back up to joint-fourth alongside Lazio, and costing Inter their chance to reclaim top spot after Napoli’s 2-2 draw with I Biancocelesti on Saturday.

Both the title race and the chase for Champions League spots are wide open. Serie A’s top three are separated by five points, a number that only feels smaller for the fact that none of them are in good form. Napoli have dropped six points in three games. Atalanta could have closed to within a game of the leaders, but instead drew 0-0 at home to Cagliari.

Bologna 3-2 Torino, Atalanta 0-0 Cagliari, Lazio 2-2 Napoli, Milan 1-0 Verona, Fiorentina 0-2 Como, Monza 0-0 Lecce, Udinese 3-0 Empoli, Parma 0-1 Roma, Juventus 1-0 Inter, Genoa 2-0 Venezia

That ought to bode well for Inter, the strongest of the three sides on paper, but they have now taken just four points from their last four matches. Even beyond the poor finishing and tired legs seen on Sunday, there were other surprising signs of sloppiness. Alessandro Bastoni was uncharacteristically off-target with his crossing.

The gap from fourth to eighth is also five points. Lazio and Juventus lead the way, but Fiorentina reminded us of their potential in a 3-0 rout of Inter this month, Milan are surging under Conceição’s father, Sérgio, and Bologna, after a tough start under Motta’s successor, Vincenzo Italiano, have lost only once in their last 17 matches.

We do not even know how many Champions League places they are fighting for, but Italy’s chances of winning a fifth spot would take a blow if any of Atalanta, Milan or Juventus should fail to make the last 16 of the Champions League. The first two of those are trailing before the second legs of their playoffs.

“We need to carry on like this,” said Conceição on Sunday. “The Champions League game is too important. We have to win all over again.”