Champions League 2001: Leeds United vs Milan

Everything Champions League was supposed to be new, even newer for the new millennium, bigger brasher brighter and bolder for the year 2000. Not in Leeds. They couldn't help looking back in Leeds to 1975 when Anderlecht came to Elland Road in the old European Cup and couldn't be seen for fog.

Tonight everything was disguised by rain, all day of it, the heavy stair-rods stuff that makes the air so thick with water you can hardly see through. The Champions League motifs covering the usual stand roofs were small, detailed and silver or, in this light, drip-grey and blurry: the crowd of sodden children waving a big tarp of Uefa's starry ball logo were vigorously shaking water off it more slowly than more water fell from above. Bigger? Elland Road was smaller tonight, Uefa's mandated advertising hoardings taller than the front rows so these were tarped over too. The Old Peacock ground looked like someone had tried duck-taping an old aquarium together in a storm.

The gloom was an extension of Saturday's boos when Jermaine Wright had scored and Ipswich Town had won, and David O'Leary was as fearful as he had been before losing 4-0 in Camp Nou. "Of course I am worried about what could happen against Milan," he said. "I lit a few more candles at mass on Sunday." His mother had too, but it wasn't clear what he was praying for. On one hand he was frustrated that he couldn't test himself tactically in the Champions League because with so few players available he could only pick what he had. He also seemed to think that Uefa had screwed Leeds over: "This is a very, very hard group, and you know the way it has been drawn that Barcelona and Milan will come through because that's what Uefa want." And he was frustrated by the search for reinforcements. "You might say we should be buying £6m or £7m players, but people around us are buying £14m or £15m players. That's the bottom line." Plenty to pray about there.

The middle line had Eirik Bakke back from injury alongside Olivier Dacourt, and the left midfielder was Dominic Matteo. Injury had allowed him only one training session since Leeds bought him from Liverpool in the summer, but he couldn't build up to his debut now, so it was Milan at home for him. Leeds went 4-4-2 and Alan Smith and Michael Bridges were smart runners, Leeds hitting channel balls to turn the backs of Milan's 3-4-3, looking more up for it than they had at any point in Barcelona. Milan's three defenders had 210 international caps between them and their names were José Chamot, Alessandro Costacurta and Paolo Maldini, but they started by missing passes to each other, moaning, looking damp. Looking human. After United's chastening week it was a welcome sign.

Humanity was also wanted in United's half because Milan's forward three — Andriy Shevchenko, Oliver Bierhoff and Andrés Guglielminpietro, aka Guly — had reputations that Michael Duberry and Danny Mills, the centre-back pairing, did not, apart from what they'd earned being run around by Marcus Stewart and Jamie Scowcroft at the weekend. By the end of the night they both, and Gary Kelly, Ian Harte and Nigel Martyn, had made errors that on drier nights and without Champions League intensity might have led to goals. But by the end of the night they had each bailed out another, and the sight of Duberry and Mills splashing across the turf, chasing down and slide-tackling Shevchenko, fortified the crowd.