Keith Duggan Sideline Cut: Not long before midnight on Wednesday in Old Trafford, Marcello Lippi was asked how he felt at this moment in his life.

Perhaps the accuracy of his sentiments was lost in the translation, but the words communicated in the warm and muted auditorium were, "Tired. More tired than you could possibly imagine. Tired in my heart."

Shortly after a dignified valedictory, during which he mused upon the endless series of misfortunes that visited his beloved Juventus, Lippi departed, outwardly unruffled by the draining events of the evening.

A flicker of a smile crossed his tan features at the polite outbreak of applause from his Italian inquisitors and he raised a hand in brief acknowledgement.

The mood was funereal, lachrymose and sympathetic, and did not notably change when Carlo Ancelotti, the victorious Milan coach, took his place at the high table. Through a series of non-committal grimaces and utterances that amounted to little more than grunts, Ancelotti - a perfect response in sartorial dishevelment to Lippi's smoothness - confirmed that he was indeed happy that his side were now champions of Europe. But he was not entirely convincing, and it was certainly difficult to detect any change in his soulful, hangdog features. And that was entirely how it ought to have been.

Old Trafford was magical on Wednesday evening, but the pervading sense was not of happiness. It was something deeper. On the tram out to the stadium at tea-time, the rossoneri of Milan had been boisterous and jubilant. The trolleys were crammed with the visiting football fans and tolerant Mancunians laden with Tesco bags. It was sweltering, and the Milanese bellowed their songs, whipping themselves into a frenzy the way the Native American braves used to before going to battle.

Some six hours later these same fans gathered on the outdoor platform awaiting transport back in. Now, they were quiet and contemplative, touched by something other than the normal frivolous pleasures associated with fans enjoying a team victory. They rolled tobacco and glanced back at the still burning amphitheatre and leaned against the metal railings, solemn and all out of song. And the Italians are a nation who, even in small gatherings, are capable of such terrific bursts of noise that being in the presence of quiet hundreds was unnerving. Winning brings its own ending.

In Manchester's theatre of dreams, the drama the Italians favoured was clear and minimal. If Beckett had written a football match, this would surely have been it. 0-0, as the saying goes, is the score of life.

The feeling you get from the Italians is that soccer is not something they have a choice about, that the game inflicts itself upon them and leaves them no option but to worship it. Which is not to say their support is any way superior to fans of the English or Irish game. But they do seem to regard the game as more of a metaphor, a reflection of life rather than an escape from it.

There was a period in the final, maybe late in the second half or just during extra time, when the act of scoring a goal, no matter how brilliant, would have been an assault on the spirit of the game. For it was the futility of trying to score, the near pointlessness of it, that was the narrative of this game, and as the night grew old so too did the odds on the intervention of genius, à la Zidane in Glasgow, greatly lengthen. When David Trezeguet missed the first penalty, the thought struck that goals of any form might be beyond this game, that the Italians would keep kicking penalties until the moon was high in the sky but that the score would remain a stubborn 0-0.

And that the players would eventually end up just standing on the field lost as to how to progress but unable to leave until there was a satisfactory resolution.

And, in a way, that would have been the perfect ending, because the Italians believe - and rightly - that sooner or later the game breaks the man. Perhaps that is why there was little discernible difference between the losing Marcello Lippi and the triumphant Carlo Ancellotti as they took their respective bows.

The reason for Lippi's wonderful calm on the sideline is that he knows that, besides making personnel and tactical switches, it is all ultimately out of his hands. It is just fate. Alex Ferguson, who more than once professed his admiration for Lippi last week, would do well to learn that, instead of working himself into health-threatening states of fury in the stands and in the dressing-room. There arrives a stage when a certain course becomes unalterable. Lippi tampered and tweaked with his team all night but realised that the gods were going to have their way and that it just was not going to be Juve's moment.

Ancelotti seemed imbued with a different sort of fatalism. Winning - even something of the magnitude of the Champions League - is really just a small mercy. The only certainty that acquiring the major trophy of your sport brings is that sooner or later you are going to suffer the hurt of having it taken from your possession. Ecstasy is the couple of minutes between hearing the final whistle and taking a physical hold of the cup.

Afterwards, it was fun reading the rave reviews that all the cross-sea papers gave this final, with caps doffed to the high art of defence and the magisterial poise of the veterans on both sides. It was a complete departure from the moaning and near sneering about the stifling negativity of the Italian game.

But the tributes seemed genuine. It was as if the spectacle of the austere and uncompromising Italian way in Old Trafford, the Broadway of the English game and the stage for so many helter-skelter ties, cast it in a new light. From this familiar perspective, the slow and considered Italian approach suddenly made all the frantic chasing and goal-a-minute excitement that is supposed to make the Premiership so exciting seem juvenile and unnecessary.

The English grew up learning to appreciate and celebrate goals as an end in themselves. For Italians, it is as though they are merely a brief respite from the greater worry.

The warmth shown in Manchester to the Italians was remarkable and a sign of how far the soul of the European game has travelled in the 18 years since Heysel. On Tuesday evening, they put on a free show featuring northern acts like Badly Drawn Boy and the comedian Johnny Vegas. It was a great sight, watching the Italians holding hot drinks as they stood in the drizzle, benignly confused as they tried their best to understand the glum charm of north of England humour.

But the Italians did not come to England to laugh or be truly happy. They came hoping the worst would not pass, that it would be diverted until next season. The celebration really occurred beforehand, when the evening was young and the pretence that anything was possible was still acceptable.

With the game came the old anxieties. All the singing and the noise, the braggadocio, is just to ward off evil, to convince themselves that it would be okay. Winners and losers, they all ended the night with the same abiding emotion; they were tired in their hearts.