Dzeko and Mkhitaryan punish Milan’s slow start to put fearless Inter in charge | Champions League
After the silence, the explosion. Within the hours and the times earlier than this sport Milan was an anxious, curiously sullen metropolis: a metropolis on the verge of one thing, a metropolis ready for its time. Maybe on some stage Milan has been ready 20 years for an evening like this, the sport and the event that will restore it to the centre of the footballing universe. And because the groups lastly emerged for this Champions League semi-final it felt as if all that bottled stress was being launched in a single overwhelming second: an environment that shook that senses, fireworks that rattled the ribs, banners that reached to the sky. That noise. What should it’s wish to play soccer in that form of noise? With that weight of longing, with all of the ghosts of Milans and Inters previous, with the attention that that is your time and it might not come once more? San Siro on this crisp Wednesday night time was a godly factor: a distinctly Italian music of pure starvation, a screaming and a pleading, the form of din that forces coaches to speak in signal language. And if there was…