It's over. Congratulations and commiserations are being exchanged, and the sideline flames have been lit (again melting most of the players on the right of frame into a heat haze.)

Well, this is the very definition of mixed feelings.

Part of me was nervously and regularly glancing at the match clock for the preceding 15 minutes, worrying that something, somehow could still go catastrophically wrong despite my knowledge of calcio analytics telling me that it was wildly improbable.

The other part of me realised that the thing I had been waiting almost 3 months for was now at an end, and that if I get to see AS Roma play again, it's extremely unlikely to be in Australia. After all, this is the first time they've played here in 58 years.

Yes, I can subscribe to BeIN next year and see the matches on TV, but it won't be the same experience. I'm not talking about the atmosphere. Well, that too. But I'm talking about the different experience of watching that I described in image 1037.

In a televised match you see what the broadcast director decrees that you see.

In a live match, you watch the entire field, working out where the play will go, how it will evolve, what tactics are in play.

I cannot say that this experience was a disappointment in any way (hey, winning by 3 goals helped), but...the disappointing part is that it's now part of my past, with nothing equivalent in my foreseeable future.