The public bins: full to overflowing.
Holloway Road underground station: so crowded as to be essentially impassable.
The pubs: spilling out on to the pavements.
The pavements: spilling out on to the streets.
Leah Williamson: for some reason, and to the general rapture of social media, pulling pints behind the bar at The Tollington.
The programme queues: sizeable.
The Emirates: sold out.
The Arsenal men’s team: not playing tonight.
The attendance the last time Arsenal played a Champions League semi-final at home, 10 years ago: 1,406.
What the Champions League was called back then: the Uefa Women’s Cup.
The record crowd for a game of women’s club football in the UK until tonight: 49,094.
The record now: 60,063.
The most frequent refrain you hear about women’s football: nobody cares.
The mood: two parts frivolity to one part foreboding, a lightness and a heaviness, the giddiness of the occasion freighted by the buried awareness of what it all means.
The tie: level after 90 minutes.
The evening sun: reassuringly warm and low, casting a little strip of light along one touchline.
Jonas Eidevall’s hair: gelled up so high above his head that the first three rows behind the Arsenal dugout have been reclassified as “restricted view” seats.
The Arsenal team as they crouch for their pre-match photo op: not grim and stony-faced, not edgy or nervous, but broad and beaming, as if this is the front door to the best house party they have ever been to in their lives.
Katie McCabe: sliding in to win the ball from an angle at which, frankly, only McCabe and perhaps Paul Scholes would even consider trying to win it.
The break: on.
Lia Wälti’s through ball: searching but speculative.
Stina Blackstenius: second favourite to get there.
Blackstenius: curiously unfussed at being second favourite.
Kathrin Hendrich: suddenly petrified.
Hendrich: tripping over herself.
The net: empty.
The net: bulging.
The score: 1-0.
The time: 10 minutes.
Steph Catley: stepping inside and delivering pinpoint through balls.
Wälti: playing the game from a little velvet throne.
The Wolfsburg defence: standing off.
The Wolfsburg midfield: emptying out.
Arsenal: in control.
The sun: still out.
The Wolfsburg set-piece routine: almost certainly rehearsed.
The free-kick from Svenja Huth: clipped.
Alex Popp: peeling away cleverly into the left channel.
The height difference between Popp and McCabe: about four inches.
The header from Popp: cushioned down towards the edge of the penalty area.
The finish from Jill Roord: low, skimming and vicious.
Arsenal: looking vaguely stunned, as if they should have seen this coming but had no reason to do so.
Manuela Zinsberger: single‑handedly pumping the crowd for more noise.
The club Roord played for before she joined Wolfsburg: Arsenal.
The time: 57 minutes.
The goal: an elementary near-post flick from a right-wing corner.
But the move that created it: sublime, inexorable, a gradual ratcheting of pressure followed by the sort of quick one-two that catches out a team that have just begun to chase the ball a little.
Popp: towering.
Jonas’s hairdo: if anything, just beginning to droop a little.
The Emirates: silent.
Eindhoven: 242 miles away, and drifting.
Lina Hurtig: on.
Blackstenius: off.
Blackstenius: looking visibly crushed as she leaves the pitch, like a part of herself has been stripped away.
Zinsberger: down receiving treatment.
Zinsberger: absolutely fine.
Zinsberger: trying her hardest not to look absolutely fine.
Arsenal: in a huddle by the side of the pitch and now receiving a curiously well-planned tactical briefing.
Arsenal: getting a break, killing Wolfsburg’s momentum, regrouping.
Zinsberger: still absolutely fine.
Lotte Wubben-Moy’s preferred foot: right.
Foot with which Wubben-Moy, a centre-back, somehow delivers a pinpoint cross to set up the Arsenal equaliser: left.
Jen Beattie’s weight: taking her away from goal.
The player challenging her for the ball: Alex Popp.
The header: brilliantly won and brilliantly directed.
Jonas’s hair: somehow quite perky again.
The player Wolfsburg are able to bring off the bench in extra time: Jule Brand, a 30-cap Germany international and voted last year’s best young player in Europe.
Number of outfield internationals Arsenal are able to bring off their bench in extra time: zero.
Injured Arsenal players: Beth Mead, Vivianne Miedema, Kim Little, Williamson, Caitlin Foord.
Player who wins the ball on the left and sets up Pauline Bremer for the winning Wolfsburg goal in the 119th minute: Brand.
The limbs: screaming.
The crowd: screaming.
The Wolfsburg substitutes: on the pitch.
The Arsenal players: on the ground.
This year’s Champions League final: Wolfsburg v Barcelona.
The difference between the sides: greater poise at set pieces, the capacity to ride out the tough periods, the ability not to give away two goals by passing it straight to the opposition.
The crowd: still a record.
The long-term significance of this fixture for the women’s game: absolutely immense.
The mood at full-time: bleak.
• This article was amended on 2 May 2023 to correct the date and attendance of Arsenal’s last home Champions League semi-final.
