On the morning of the Milan match the taxi arrived at 6.30 sharp already with Hungry Tony in the passenger seat, off to Staines to pick up Baso and then Heathrow about 10 minutes away. We are flying Swiss Air to Zurich where we will meet up with Simon who is flying from London City Airport and then the short hop over the Alps to Milan. I have been looking forward to this short trip over the Alps as I have heard it is really spectacular, and it does not disappoint with unbelievable scenery.

We land in Milan and take a coach to central station and see the hotel we are staying at as we depart the coach. Hotel Splendido is a 4 Star hotel and as soon as we check in we head for the bar where we meet up with Slippery and Kathy who have been there since Sunday shopping, Marcel and Nicole from Germany, Liam, Mark and Jonas as well as a few other Gooners.

We get the traditional European away drinks in, Bloody Mary’s all round and then catch up with all of the gossip, Carsten and his better half Erika and Rune the Gooner from Norway arrive as well and we chat for the rest of the afternoon at the bar, all to soon the time runs out and settle the 340 euro bar bill (ouch) and decide to get something to eat before heading off to the game.

The Metro ride is uneventful and get off at the nearest stop catch the tram to the San Siro. If you have never seen the San Siro in the flesh so to speak the it is an unusual stadium, it is breathtakingly magnificent in a very ugly way, but still spectacularly inspiring and well…………….just so bloody huge.

I stopped off and got my son his scarf to add to the collection and something to eat, it was like a spicy sausage in a baguette with onions and sauce, we headed inside the ground without getting our tickets cross referenced with out passports like we were told would happen and just took in the view of the San Siro all light up for the evening game.

We made our way up the never-ending spiral rampsand then to the back of the top tier behind the goal and the place was packed out with the noise deafening, Arsenal fans were up for it in a big way and the anticipation was nearing fever pitch.

The match kicks off and we are up against it for the first 20 minutes or so and we look as if we are in awe of them for a while, then the midfield start to bite back with Flamini tackles going in to rough them up a bit and we start to stand up for ourselves a bit more and we then start to believe and this knocks Milan out of there stride, Cesc was magnificent and added the guile and panache whilst Hleb robbed more players of the ball with such artistry the AC Milan were practically applauding every time he done it (asking him to repaint the Sistine Chapel as well) and without a doubt Hleb was my own personal choice for man of the match but who could argue with any other nomination as they all had a case.

The Arsenal fans kept all of the support going for the whole 90 minutes, not just to sing the songs, but because we could sense something was going to happen, “if we could just get to half time at 0 – 0 I really fancy our chances” I said to Simon. That passed and we came out and knew we must withstand the first 5 minutes as we knew AC Milan were going to try and get the initiative back with the renewed tactics from their half time team talk.

I don’t know what all the panic was about, we bossed them from the start, the moment the midfield robbed them twice in the fist two minutes and at that point there heads dropped, Milan started to look at each other and were wondering what was happening to them, the Arsenal fans started to crank up the noise as the belief was for all to see and hear. The Milan fans were silent and then started to turn on the officials for everything but we just bossed them time and time again.

Gallas showed his true class as did the whole defence this night and as for Senderos! who on earth thought that Swiss Tony would have Kaka in his pocket all night? It was a truly fantastic display by the whole team including the substitutes and especially young Theo and the impact he made on the game, 

I am sure it has been described a million times already but Cesc’s goal was just incredible, why did he score, simple he took the shot early, up until then Milan had blocked everything but this time they did not have time to do it and the fans went mental, if you were in Copenhagen when Smudger scored against Parma then it was like that all over again, Adebayors goal made it 2 – 0 and game over , however it has to be said the AC Milan were never going to come back from 1 – 0, the fans left in there droves the second the Cesc scored. Fuill time and Arsenal had beaten the reigning champions and were through to the next round.
 
Milan showed the Arsenal fans the Arsenal Official History DVD for the hour we were locked in after the game, which was a nice touch and kept us amused however , finding out that we could not get back to Central Station by public transport after the game was a bit off, why keep you in so that the fans cant get away, we made half of our journey by metro,  then at midnight it just stopped no matter which station you were at? How pathetic is that?

Back to Hotel Splendido for  the after match drinking and finally went to bed about 4am. Magnificent day all round.

The trip over the Alps back to Zurich was a bit special for all the wrong reasons as we had a huge amount of turbulence and most of the other passengers were screaming thinking the end is nigh, but we managed to laugh it off with the Celtic Supporters who were sitting right behind us, who were returning from Barcelona

The trip reports usually stop about this point but there are a few things still to tell, when we got to Malpensa Airport (Milan) we bumped into an ex Italian player who has a huge Arsenal connection who just happened to be carrying the original European Cup with him and we managed to persuade him to let us have our picture taken with him and let us Gooners finally get our hand on the trophy.

Any guesses for who this player is and what his connection with Arsenal is?

Just look at the images from the trip to see the person with me.