Milan Champions League semi-final sparks memories of Italy's superpower past

Up in the VIP seats at San Siro, Paolo Maldini and Javier Zanetti will itch to be taking part. Maldini, now 54, played in eight European Cup semi-finals at the city of Milan’s great, shared sporting theatre.

Since retiring, he has spent long years wondering if the club of his lifetime, the AC Milan where he is now a director, might ever keep such elevated company again.

Zanetti, 49 and a vice-president of Inter Milan, spent much of the last decade nursing the same fears for the club he served as a player for 19 seasons. In his time, he played in two San Siro Champions League semis and lifted the trophy on the last occasion any Italian team were Europe’s club champions.

Twenty years ago this week, they played their highest stakes derby, Zanetti and Maldini opposing skippers on the only previous nights the reds and blues vied over two legs for a place in a European Cup final. But if they are the highest-profile link between Wednesday’s all-Milanese semi-final and a distant era of superpowered Italian football, there will be many others on site relishing the sequel.

Seated in the grandstands, regretting the injury that caused him to be left out of Milan’s Uefa-registered squad will be Zlatan Ibrahimovic, still, at 41, a Milan player. Back in 2003, he was an ambitious Ajax striker, on the losing side to Maldini’s Milan in the quarter-finals and on the cusp of a move to Serie A, where he accumulated trophies with Inter and Milan.

Much closer to the action will be Federico Dimarco, the dynamic Inter left-back who has a faint memory of watching the 2003 "Euroderby", won by Milan on away goals, as a five-year old Inter fan.

Another interested observer then was Simone Inzaghi, the manager who has now taken Inter further in