Lazio were brilliant. Simone Inzaghi, a young manager, my generation, sharp and hungry had built a team that played with the technical fluency and tactical intelligence that Italian football demanded at its best.
They moved the ball from back to front in three passes. Felipe Anderson drifted off the left, his feet a blur, his step-overs maddening. Luis Alberto conducted everything from the centre, finding spaces that shouldn't have existed, playing passes that arrived at their destination before the defenders had finished their first step.
And Immobile... Ciro Immobile, the golden boy of Italian football... moved between the lines with the predatory instinct of a man who had been scoring goals in this stadium since he was a teenager.
In the eleventh minute, he struck. A flowing move down the right, Felipe Anderson skipping past Ward with a step-over and a burst of pace that left the Palace right-back clutching air. Anderson's cut-back was low and hard, aimed at the near post.
