Koné scored twice in the first half, and Lautaro Martínez had both goals back by the 79th

For forty-five minutes at the Stadio Olimpico on Saturday, Roma looked like the best team in Italy. Manu Koné scored in the sixth minute and again in the thirty-seventh, Inter could not get near him, and Gian Piero Gasperini’s side went in at the break two goals up on the reigning champions. Then Lautaro Martínez scored within a minute of the restart, and the evening turned into something else entirely.

It finished 2-2. The two clubs had arrived as the only sides in Serie A with a perfect record, twelve points from four, and they leave matchday five still unbeaten and still level, on thirteen, with Roma ahead on goal difference.

Koné’s first half was as good as Roma have played

The opener came from the right. Paulo Dybala crossed, Nahuel Molina nodded it down, and Koné finished. The second, on thirty-seven minutes, followed another Dybala cross that Gianluca Mancini flicked on, and needed a VAR check before the offside flag was overruled and the goal stood.

Opta count Koné as only the fifth Roma player to score twice in the first half of a Serie A match against Inter. The underlying numbers agreed with the scoreboard: Roma had 1.25 expected goals to Inter’s 0.88 before the interval, and Inter’s forwards had barely been in the game.

Inter’s second half was a different match

Cristian Chivu did not need long to fix it. Marcus Thuram put a ball across inside sixty seconds of the restart and Martínez turned it in. From there Inter took over. The second-half expected goals read 1.49 to Inter and 0.43 to Roma, close to an exact reversal of the first forty-five.

The equaliser came on seventy-nine minutes, scrambled in from a corner after Mile Svilar had made the save, and it was Martínez again. That is four Serie A goals for the Inter captain this season, and it is the sixth time under Chivu that Inter have come back from two down. Whatever else that record says, it says this squad does not treat a two-goal deficit as a finished match.

Roma held on for the point. Possession finished 51-49 to Inter, shots on target 5-4, and neither manager could reasonably claim to have been robbed.

Mazzola, and a fixture that has always done this

The match was preceded by a tribute to Sandro Mazzola, who died on Saturday at 83. He spent all seventeen years of his playing career at Inter, scored 158 goals in 565 appearances, won four Serie A titles and two European Cups, and was in the Italy side that won the 1968 European Championship. His father Valentino died in the Superga air disaster in 1949, when Sandro was six. The funeral is on Monday at the Basilica of Sant’Ambrogio in Milan.

His old club then played out exactly the sort of game this fixture keeps producing. By Opta’s count, Roma against Inter has generated 544 goals across 187 meetings, more than any other pairing in Serie A history. It was also the first time the league’s top two unbeaten sides had met since October 2014, when Juventus beat Roma 3-2.

Roma are unbeaten through five league matches for the first time since 2014-15, and they have now scored at least twice in ten consecutive Serie A games, which the club has never done before. Inter dropped points for the first time this season and will not much mind, because at half-time they were getting none at all.

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