Rather poignantly, as it turned out, the clock above the Stadio delle Alpi's curva nord stopped at 8.51pm last Wednesday, just about the time the first flare had been launched by Juventus fans into the Manchester United seats. It was the moment when the Old Lady of Turin would most happily have cut short her arrangements for the evening, curtsied her farewells and begun fitting out the ballgown for her annual May date at the European Cup final.
Yet Juventus were obliged to entertain their guests a little longer. Juve even scored another goal, five minutes later, but its effect, under the peculiar arithmetic of the away-goals rule, seemed only to aggravate the visitors. United had already set themselves a daunting standard for the second leg of their semi-final - to score two goals at least. Recognising the magnitude of their task hastened them back into the better habits they have acquired during this most adventurous season. Pity Juventus. Those habits include fearlessness. Defiance has long been part of the club's character.
Whatever the motivation, it was not simply looking up at a faulty clock that made this United team believe they had time, even at 2-0 down, to make amends. Having twice collected the ball from his own net within 11 minutes, Peter Schmeichel was the first to clear his throat: "I just said, 'Okay, we've got to put things right. Now.' " Yet there had been no panic, Schmeichel recalled as he pieced together the evening's dramas. He "still thought we'd got a pretty good rhythm on the game". The evidence? That Andy Cole and Dwight Yorke, once the latter dropped deep, had rediscovered their routines. Cole had threatened the Juventus goal with an overhead volley when the clock at the north end jammed, six minutes into the game.
What followed will linger in the memory with the same timeless clarity as the most resonant British nights in Europe, both in its detail - shades of Tommy Smith for Liverpool in 1977 as Roy Keane headed home United's first goal - and its suspense, with the echoes of the 1968 semi-final, when United's would-be European champions recovered from two goals down in Madrid. Victory had been achieved with mind as well as body, explained Schmeichel: "Once we'd scored the first goal I was pretty sure that we were going through. We had won back a psychological advantage."
Their opponents had certainly felt it, reckoned the Dane: "Juventus had been thinking, 'We're two-nil up. That's it, we're through to the final.' It is very difficult having been 2-0 up when you get pulled back and then you're under pressure all the time. Once Yorkie got the second goal, I was pretty sure this was going to be our night."
So it would be, for all 12 players involved, particularly those deserving honourable mentions. They include Schmeichel, for at least two interventions which kept United in the chase; Keane, plus Yorke and Cole for seizing opportunity in oppressive circumstances; Denis Irwin, immaculate at left-back and the second United player to have an effort rebound off a post; and Jaap Stam, not least for heading off the goal-line at 2-1.
Stam, above all, had a giant night, not simply in his tidiness in the air and in the tackle but in his accomplished tracking of opponents with tricks as varied as the shimmies of Zinedine Zidane and the thrust of Nicola Amoruso. If Filippo Inzaghi, scorer of both Juventus goals, remained a menace, at least Stam and his manager, Alex Ferguson, should rest assured they will not face his like again this season. Bayern Munich's most slippery forward, Giovane Elber, is not available, because of injury, for the final.
After the game, Stam spoke of the same self-belief as Schmeichel. "We have overcome a lot of great teams this season," the Dutchman said, "and we had made up our minds to go for it. With this United side, it doesn't matter if we are one or two behind, we will always look for the equaliser." Despite a chronic failure of concentration at the early stages of European matches, United have come from behind in Munich, Barcelona, Milan and Turin. Send them to the moon and they would recover their sense of gravity by half-time.
Italy, though, was always the big one. A deficit there tends to stick - "everybody wrote that the first-leg draw was like a defeat," noted Stam - and the belief behind Wednesday's achievement was partly rooted in United's success during the quarter-final against Internazionale. Having toppled one Italian monument, the shadow cast by another seemed less forbidding. United's victory means not simply that, for the first time in 14 years, an English club has reached the major European final, but that, for only the second time in the last decade, no Italian team is taking part in it.
SO much for the recollections of the night. A run of 25 games unbeaten, which United take to Elland Road in pursuit of the Premiership title today, also contributes to their confidence. "We have shown a lot of quality over the last couple of months," said Stam. "Up front we have good options, and players who are always going to create chances, and can always score goals. We have a lot of self-belief. We'll respect others, without fearing any team. But you also need discipline to reach European Cup finals. We have good stamina."
The bad news? That United's stamina is about to be examined still more intensely, not just over the eight games left in the next month, but, apparently, through the 60-odd matches they can reasonably expect to contest by next April, when the new Champions League will have filtered 32 teams in its group stages and will commit the most successful to 17 European matches. One fact acknowledged by United chairman Martin Edwards and Ferguson is that this season the club have a better chance of winning the European Cup than in any of those immediately ahead.
As the congratulations flowed and Ferguson permitted himself a glass of champagne on Wednesday, Edwards was about the only United man you could find who readily confessed to having felt "worried when we were two-nil down". His desire for United to seize their May moment is informed by what he now envisages as a necessary period of "experiment" next season. Funds this summer, he says, will be guaranteed only for buying Schmeichel's replacement, renewing Ferguson's contract, and ploughing some £44m into an enlarged Old Trafford and an improved training facility.
"There is a limit to how much we can keep spending," Edwards said. "But it is going to be more difficult for English clubs to be successful in the Champions League next year, no question. We play a lot more league games than any other country, apart from Spain, and we have two domestic Cup competitions.
"We've got a big squad already, but it clearly means we're going to have to stretch that squad on more occasions. Players are going to have to play more games. It'll be the first year of it and we'll have to experiment." It only goes so far, is the obvious answer. While Edwards has been rightly impressed by Ferguson's intelligent judgments in resting players and balancing his squad, the manager will be reluctant to see that virtue turned so eagerly by his chairman into a long-term necessity. Both men agree there are good, emerging players at United, such as Wes Brown, Michael Clegg, Mark Wilson and Jonathan Greening, but Europe is a tough old course, best learnt gradually and in the company of worldly colleagues. Ferguson has said he would like "two or three" top-drawer signings to join in the summer.
After Wednesday's heroics, there remains an uncomfortable possibility that the argument for that sort of squad-strengthening will be played out painfully in Barcelona on May 26. Even if all his players stay fit until the European Cup final, Ferguson will be without the suspended Keane and Paul Scholes. Keane's absence contributed to United's exits from Europe in the past two years, and the Irishman is an even better footballer now than then. Furthermore, Nicky Butt, almost certain to start against Bayern, tends to look stronger when Keane is alongside him.
If the suspensions look like rotten luck for Keane, Scholes and United, they come with the territory. Edwards may care to recall that the one area in which his manager was unsuccessful during last summer's £28m recruitment drive was at the base of midfield, when Marc-Vivien Foe's broken leg put paid to a deal which would have brought the Cameroon player to Old Trafford and provided enviable back-up, in reserve or in tandem with Keane. Edwards's board might also care to recall that one English club, Arsenal, have already perished in the Champions League this season because of a lack of cover for their midfield heart. In the modern game, managers anticipate certain periods of enforced absence from their ball-winners.
None of which need discount a happy ending to United's 1999 adventure. They possess superior midfield understudies to Arsenal or Bayern and Ferguson has a variety of options, ranging from the radical - Phil Neville to man-mark Steffen Effenberg or Ryan Giggs to play through the middle - to the robust, placing Ronny Johnsen alongside Butt. Keane's distribution will be missed, and there will be many arguments in the next month for David Beckham to move inside from the right flank. Ferguson is likely to want the best crosser in Europe to be issuing crosses in pursuit of Europe's greatest prize.
Whatever the scenario, Keane's absence makes Schmeichel the probable captain at Barcelona's Nou Camp. The search for outfield leadership need extend no further than Stam. He's already talking the talk.
"Normally," he said, "you can only dream about European Cups. Well, this dream has almost come true."
"In the last couple of months," added Schmeichel, "it's been really good fun playing football." He will sorely miss it once the clock stops on May 26.
