Inter's Henrikh Mkhitaryan rued a marginal offside call as he set himself a simple task for next week's second leg against Barcelona.

Mkhitaryan thought he had put Inter into a 4-3 lead late on during Wednesday's thrilling first leg of the Champions League semi-final tie.

Marcus Thuram scored the quickest goal in Champions League semi-final history after just 30 seconds, before Denzel Dumfries made it 2-0.

However, Lamine Yamal dragged Barca back into it with a moment of magic on his 100th Blaugrana appearance, with Ferran Torres then restoring parity.

Dumfries' second of the match put Inter back ahead, though Barca levelled just 114 seconds later through Yann Sommer's own goal.

Mkhitaryan steered home from a right-wing cross, but the assistant's flag was up for offside, with the semi-automated system confirming a small portion of the Armenian's foot was beyond the last man.

"I feel very gutted," Mkhitaryan told TNT Sports when asked about the disallowed goal.

"Unfortunately, maybe it was two or three centimetres, but you cannot do anything.

"Maybe I rushed to go offside, I wanted to score this goal too much. This is football – I have to score in the second leg, that's it."

This was just the third time Inter have failed to win a Champions League game, having led by 2+ goals, after a 3-2 loss to Borussia Dortmund in November 2019 and a 3-3 draw with Benfica in April 2023.

"It was a crazy game, a great game to watch but not to play – it was very hard," Mkhitaryan said.

"We could have done even better. It's football, anything can happen. We were leading for 20 minutes, but it's not like we thought the game was won already. It's just that Barca put lots of pressure on us; they were very good with the ball.

"We're confident we can do better. It's not easy to play against Barca, they're a very young, talented team. The only thing the coach said is keep our heads up, keep doing what we're doing."

Inter, who are three points behind Napoli in the Serie A title race, were dealt a blow at half-time when Lautaro Martinez was forced off injured, and Mkhitaryan implied the Argentine will be missing for the second leg.

"We lost our captain, our leader, Lautaro, but we have to do our best to replace him and play without him," he said.

Dumfries, meanwhile, was named Player of the Match after becoming the first Dutchman since Wesley Sneijder to score and assist in a Champions League semi-final.

"That's a nice statistic. I didn't know that," Dumfries told TNT Sports when that Opta fact was put to him.

"I was very proud of the performance today.

"Crazy game in the end, both teams fought for the win, now we look forward to the next match."