After the silence, the explosion. In the hours and the days before this game Milan was an anxious, curiously sullen city: a city on the verge of something, a city waiting for its time. Perhaps on some level Milan has been waiting two decades for a night like this, the game and the occasion that would restore it to the centre of the footballing universe. And as the teams finally emerged for this Champions League semi-final it felt as if all that bottled tension was being released in a single overwhelming moment: an atmosphere that shook that senses, fireworks that rattled the ribs, banners that reached to the sky.
That noise. What must it be like to play football in that kind of noise? With that weight of longing, with all the ghosts of Milans and Inters past, with the awareness that this is your time and it may not come again? San Siro on this crisp Wednesday night was a godly thing: a distinctly Italian song of pure hunger, a screaming and a pleading, the sort of din that forces coaches to talk in sign language. And if there was a certain restraint to the emotions at full time, it was only the knowledge that next week promises more of the same agony.
