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hand out to my players. It gives a touch of humanity to what I do; you can’t write a love letter on a computer. That match ended with a score of 0–0, and I was happy about it. We had set aside a small advantage with a view to the return game, which we played the following week. I put pen to paper, and I prepared a second challenge for Inter. In among the technical suggestions and tactical tips, I added a heartfelt appeal: “This match is nothing more or less than the culmination of all our work, all our sacrifices. We should be happy that this moment has finally come.” A note written at the bottom of the page, just before the assigned markings: Costacurta–Di Biagio, Nesta–Crespo, Maldini–Materazzi, Kaladze–Coco, Inzaghi–Cordoba, and Shevchenko–Cannavaro. In black ink on white paper, I also jotted down a list of the penalty takers, just because you can never be sure: Pirlo, Rui Costa, Seedorf, Inzaghi, Costacurta, Shevchenko, Nesta, Maldini, Kaladze, and Gattuso. We never needed them; we were satisfied with the 1–1 scoreline. The final seven minutes, from when Martins evened the score to the end of the game, were the longest minutes of my life. Time seemed to stand still, my heart was racing, I probably actually had a heart attack without even realizing it. In the end, all that passes, too. Most importantly, we passed. Old Trafford, here we come. To the Theater of Dreams, against Juventus. An insane final.

When I have to deal with situations of this kind, I rely on two principles: clarity and concentration. A few days before the game, instead of holding the usual technical meeting, I organized a sort of cineforum. I showed the players a scene from Any Given Sunday, the movie in which Al Pacino, as the coach of a football team, delivers an incredible speech just before a crucial game: “You find out that life is just a game of inches. So is football. Because in either game—life or football—the margin for error is so small. And either we heal now, as a team, or we will die as individuals.” Sends chills up and down your spine. On the night before the game, I took it a step further. I prepared a DVD showing every step of our charge toward Manchester: music, exultation, goals. It was us, our team, running headlong toward heaven. At the end I turned on the lights and I didn’t say much: “There’s just one more thing we need now.” I would have nominated myself for an Oscar, for best screenplay.

Absolutely the last technical meeting was held at our training grounds just before we left for Old Trafford. All the players were there, in tracksuits, with a companion dressed slightly better than them—a little more elegant and distinguished. It was Silvio Berlusconi. He sat in the middle of the team, he wanted to take part. The fact that he was there made quite an impression on me. I handed out sheets of paper with the formations and the plays; he wanted copies for himself. (Later, I saw them published in a book by Bruno Vespa; the chairman passed them off as his own, but fair enough, because before every game in the finals, he always gave our morale a huge boost.) Berlusconi sat listening to the positions I was assigning to the team. If I know anything about him at all, he was wishing I’d send him out onto the field—as part of the starting lineup, of course. I was worried, I was afraid I’d said something idiotic. At the end of the meeting, I even asked him: “How did I do, Mr. Chairman?”

“Beautifully, Carletto, you were great. You’ll see, we’re going to win.”

And that’s exactly what happened, with a camouflaged Christmas Tree; let’s call it a slightly dirty 4-4-2, with Rui Costa on the right and Seedorf inside, moving actively around the field. We became European champions at the last penalty kick, even though it wasn’t as easy as you might think to find players willing to take that penalty kick. If I think of the lineup of penalty takers, even now I get the chills: the first was Serginho, followed by Seedorf, Kaladze, Nesta, and, fifth, Shevchenko. Inzaghi had vanished; we couldn’t find him, he’d simply dematerialized. I listed him as