MILAN — If the fans just closed their eyes in the moments after the goal and let the noise wash over them, all the screams and the songs and the chants suddenly melting into the wall of sound that filled every space inside the San Siro, they would have recognized it immediately. This is what it sounded like in the good old days.
The most senior members of the home crowd would have welcomed the cacophony as an old friend, an echo of the era when Italian soccer ruled the world and A.C. Milan ruled Italian soccer. The younger ones would have grown up on the stories of those days, when challenging for the European title was an annual affair for Italian clubs, not the rarity it has become since the last time one of them laid their hands on the trophy, in 2010.