In the lead up to the Champions League final, Fabio Capello urged Inter Milan to channel the spirit of his AC Milan side that thrashed Barcelona 31 years ago.

Back in 1994, the Rossoneri had gone into the final as clear underdogs but annihilated Johan Cruyff’s Dream Team 4-0 to lift European club soccer’s biggest prize for the fifth time.

Writing in Italian newspaper La Gazzetta dello Sport last week, the 78-year-old recalled seeing a picture of Cruyff resting with his head on a football as Barcelona trained and told his players to “kick that football away so his and Barca’s head would hit the turf.”

Capello urged Inter players do the same as they faced Paris Saint-Germain in their second Champions League finals in three seasons.

But it was the Nerazzurri who came down to earth with a resounding thud in Munich on Saturday night, thrashed 5-0 by the French champions.

This was a trouncing of historical proportions, the biggest margin of defeat in the history of the Champions League final, both in its current version and its previous guise as European Cup.

Such was PSG’s superiority that it made Milan’s 4-0 hammering of Barcelona three decades ago seem competitive.

Two years ago, Inter lost 1-0 to Manchester City at the same stage in Istanbul, but left Turkey with the feeling of being a team on an upward trajectory.

Pep Guardiola told Nerazzurri boss Simone Inzaghi that his team would be back in a Champions League final “very soon”.

His forecast proved prescient, as Inter returned to the final this season, a year after winning a 20th league title in style, the sixth major trophy under Inzaghi.

Since replacing Antonio Conte in charge in the summer of 2021, the 49-year-old has emerged as one of the outstanding managers in Europe.

Over the past four seasons Inter has never finished lower than third in Serie A and has qualified for the knockout stages of the Champions League for four consecutive campaigns.

To put that into context, in three years under Conte, the Nerazzurri won the league title in 2021, but never made it past the group stages in the Champions League.

Before that, they missed out on the competition altogether between 2012 and 2018 when they never finished higher than fourth in Serie A.

Over the past two seasons in particular, Inzaghi’s team has been a joy to watch.

Consistently attacking with purpose while remaining exceptionally difficult to break down, adaptable, and flowing in their play.

Under the former Lazio forward, Inter has also managed the increasingly rare feat of achieving success while balancing the books.

Since Inzaghi took over in 2021, Inter has spent just under $310m on players, while selling players for more than $420m.

Its wage bill this season came in at $350m, PSG’s stood at more than $810m.

There was nothing casual about reaching two Champions League finals in three years, Inter deserved its place in both fixtures.

But the shellacking against PSG on Saturday marks the end of a cycle for the current Inter team, who at 29.1 years has the oldest squad in Serie A by average age.

With 11 players in their squad over 30, it also has the oldest squad in the Champions League.

On Saturday, Inter’s band of grizzly veterans looked weary, their legs heavy as PSG’s front three of Désiré Doué, Khvicha Kvaratskhelia and Ousmane Dembele tore the Italians’ defense to shreds.

At 28 years of age, Dembele is the senior member of the trio and still nine years younger than Inter defender Francesco Acerbi, who is 13 years older than Kvaratskhelia and 18 years Doué’s senior.

It was no surprise Inter was tired in Munich either. This is a team that played 59 games this season, fighting on three fronts for eight months.

Until April, a repeat of the historic Treble - the Serie A title, the Italian Cup and the Champions League - won under Jose Mourinho 15 years ago was still on the cards.

But then it all came apart, with Inter knocked out of the Italian Cup by arch-rivals Milan, itself at its lowest ebb in almost a decade, before Napoli won the Serie A title by a point.

The fact Napoli is managed by Conte, who left Inter just three weeks after winning the title in 2021, only heightened the disappointment.

Then came the debacle in Munich, a reminder that for all of Inter’s brilliance under Inzaghi, defeats at crucial stages have not exactly been a rarity.

The Nerazzurri lost two Champions League finals in three seasons without scoring and suffered defeat in the Europa League final in 2022. They also lost the Italian Super Cup in January, squandering a 2-0 lead against Milan.

Over the past four years, the Serie A title has twice gone down to the final game of the season, with Inter coming up short on both occasions.

It is why defeat against PSG has brought Inzaghi’s future under scrutiny, perhaps more than at any other time during his five-year reign at the San Siro.

Inzaghi postponed making any decisions on his future until after the Champions League final, but indicated he was open to continuing at Inter if “the conditions were right”.

Whether those conditions will be met is harder to decipher after Saturday night’s thrashing.

More to the point, Saudi Arabian club Al Hilal has offered Inzaghi a three-year deal worth $28.6m net per season, a four-fold increase on his current $7.4m contract, which runs out at the end of next season.

The Inter manager cut a forlorn figure on Saturday night and even questioned whether he would be leading his team to the upcoming Club World Cup in the US this month.

“Am I going to the United States? I don’t know the answer to that right now,” he said in the post-match press conference.

Inter, for its part, has made no mystery it wants to keep its manager.

“Our assessment of Inzaghi hasn’t changed,” said club’s president and CEO Giuseppe Marotta.

"One bad night doesn't erase everything else."

What is certain is that it will take Inter, with or without Inzaghi, a long time to erase the memories of their collapse in Munich.