A dank Manchester drizzle settled over San Siro shortly before last night's kick-off, accompanied - as if to provide a fanfare for a fixture with a history going back to 1958 - by a succession of thunderclaps. The history strongly favoured Milan, with that first meeting, also in a semi-final, seeing the end of United's interest in the competition.

History of a more recent kind was in the mind of Paul Scholes, who started the match with an asterisk next to his name on the team sheet, denoting the threat of missing the final should he incur another caution. Such was the fate suffered by Scholes, along with Roy Keane, in 1999, when the pair of them celebrated the ultimate victory in the Camp Nou wearing club suits and ties.

It was in order to avoid the kind of indignity suffered by Scholes in the recent quarter-final against Roma, when the inefficiency of his tackling was punishingly exposed, that Alex Ferguson again played him a little further upfield than usual, as he had in the first leg against Milan a week earlier. With Michael Carrick and Darren Fletcher sitting ahead of the back four, Scholes was effectively removed from the zone in which a tackle on an opponent in possession would be an imperative rather than an option.

The negative consequences could be seen as early as the fifth minute, when Clarence Seedorf was briefly guilty of dwelling on the ball 20 yards inside Milan's half. Scholes confronted him, but the Englishman's block-tackle carried no conviction and the Dutch midfielder was able to continue on with the ball.

Gennaro Gattuso, by contrast, was enjoying the freedom to make his blocks with all the conviction of an unleashed mastiff, his shin-pad cartwheeling into the air after one such example of focused aggression. United's manager could only hope that at some point Scholes would exploit his more advanced position to create the kind of opening that invited Wayne Rooney to score the first of his two goals in the first leg.

As it had been at Old Trafford, however, it was a long time coming, and in the meantime the home side were able to give another master class in the art of retaining possession by passing the ball with marvellous vision and touch. Each time the ball was stroked from one Milan player to another it seemed to create new space in which they could do their work.

United, by contrast, were delivering the ball into areas that immediately became congested. So little were Ferguson's men creating in the central areas that Scholes was having to drop back to take possession from Fletcher and Carrick. In doing so, however, he was losing touch with his forwards.

For 45 minutes Milan played as if their opponents were merely an obstacle standing between them and revenge against Liverpool for the famous indignity inflicted in the final two years ago. Each one of their midfielders looked in outstanding form, even the unsung Massimo Ambrosini, wearing the captain's armband in the enforced absence of Paolo Maldini and rising to the occasion with a series of clinical interceptions. At the back Alessandro Nesta was an imperious presence while no questions were being asked of Kakha Kaladze, Maldini's understudy and potentially the weakest link in the defence.

The measure of Milan's supremacy came just before half-time when Gattuso chased Cristiano Ronaldo down the wing and shouldered him aside with an air of brusque disdain. Hearing the cheers from his side's supporters, the former Rangers player gestured for more. For United, hope could only come from the knowledge Milan had played the same way for 45 minutes in Istanbul, only to collapse beneath the force of Liverpool's rekindled passion - and, of course, a radically realigned formation.

Rafael Benitez made the right decisions during the interval that night, but only by correcting his initial errors. Ferguson had made no such obvious mistakes in his starting line-up last night so there seemed to be less scope for tactical rearrangement. In the event his team came out for the second half with Ryan Giggs moved from the right to the left wing, Ronaldo switched to the centre alongside Rooney, and Fletcher out on the right wing.

This left Scholes and Carrick with the responsibility for both winning the ball and distributing it against an opposition midfield enjoying almost total dominance. It was not a prospect that seemed to hold out great promise.

Their only hope was that Milan would fall into the sort of becalmed stupor that enabled Liverpool to catch them. That, and the knowledge of their own ability to conjure a couple of goals from a game that seemed to have passed beyond their control. But Milan's awareness of history looked more likely to have the crucial influence on the outcome of a tie in which United were again forced to draw on reserves of raw spirit.

It was to their credit that the closing period saw the home team abandoning their urbane calm before Alberto Gilardino's goal took the score closer to that endured by Matt Busby's team half a century ago.

Guardian Service