Inter Milan 0
Burdisso s/o 50
Liverpool 1
Torres 63
Inter Milan 0 Liverpool 1 (0-3 agg) March 11 2008
Inter Milan were reduced to ten-men again as Liverpool shrugged off their challenge to become the fourth Premier League side in the Champions League quarter-finals.
After having Marco Materazzi sent off in the first leg of the tie, the Nerazzuri were once again a man down when Nicolas Burdisso was given his marching orders at the beginning of the second half.
Liverpool took full advantage of their numerical supremacy with Fernando Torres slotting home the game's only goal.
Inter started with attacking intent and the first opportunity of the match fell to Esteban Cambiasso in the third minute when he ran onto Zlatan Ibrahimovic's cross but Lucas Leiva did enough to put the Argentinian off his shot.
Pepe Reina was severely tested in the eighth minute when Julio Cruz collected a corner, created some space and fired a powerful, low drive at the bottom left corner, forcing the Liverpool keeper into a diving save that resulted in a corner.
The Nerazzuri kept pushing towards the Liverpool goal and in the eleventh minute Dirk Kuyt fouled Inter skipper Zanetti just outside the Liverpool penalty area. Ryan Babel encroached on the resultant free-kick and received a yellow-card for his troubles.
The visitors were visibly rattled at this point as they desperately guarded against a relentless onslaught.
Liverpool's first real chance of note came when Fabio Aurelio's long-ball forward fell just in front of Babel but Inter keeper Julio Cesar came racing out of his area and calmly rounded the Liverpool midfielder before clearing the ball upfield.
The Inter defence came close to burying the tie when some sloppy passing in the 28th minute was pounced on by Fernando Torres. He raced towards goal but shot straight at Cesar from an admittedly very tight angle.
The game settled into a compelling cut-and-thrust around the half-hour mark, with the sides trading blows in wave of attack and counter-attack, although neither found a way through.
Zanetti ensured that Jamie Carragher's 100th Champions League game was an extremely busy one as he never stopped bustling about and showed some great turns and tricks to test the Liverpool defence.
Cruz had the chance of the half in the 43rd minute when he cleverly flicked Maicon's low cross towards the bottom corner of goal, only for Reina to make an excellent reflex save.
Liverpool would have been happy to go into the break with the scores level, having weathered everything that the home side threw at them.
The tie was effectively decided when Nicolas Burdisso was rather harshly shown a second yellow for a raised studs challenge on Leiva a mere 4 minutes into the second-half, reducing Inter to ten men for the second time in this two-legged tie.
Ibrahimovic wasted two great opportunities within a minute of each other when he first fired a free-kick high and wide before shooting narrowly wide of goal after pouncing on an error by Skrtel, but Liverpool were living a charmed life at this point and the impression was growing that it just wasn't to be the Italians' night.
Inter's glimmer of hope was cruelly snuffed out in the 63rd minute when Fernando Torres received the ball with his back to goal on the edge of the Inter penalty area. He chested the ball down, swiveled and smashed an unstoppable volley past Cesar to make Inter's task all but insurmountable.
Roberto Mancini made some replacements but the Inter players body language made it clear that they were well and truly beaten and, with ten minutes left on the clock, the fans felt the same and started streaming out of the San Siro.
The result means Liverpool join Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester United in the quarter-finals, setting up the possibility of all-Premier League semi-finals.