THE LAST time Alex Ferguson met Carlo Ancelotti, coach against coach in a European Cup semi-final, he felt relieved to be seeing him. It was 1999 and a 1-1 from the first leg at Old Trafford would leave the tie poised, leaning slightly in favour of Ancelotti’s team.

Arriving in Italy, the identity of his opposite number gave Ferguson optimism. Ancelotti had been only been in charge of Juventus for four months. “He had steadied the ship since the departure of Marcello Lippi,” Ferguson noted, “but I thought what a godsend it was that Lippi was not in the dugout.”

The rest is nostalgia. Ancelotti’s Juve would lead the second leg 2-0 by the 11th minute; United would win the match 3-2, the tie 4-3, bound for another breathtaking comeback in the final in Barcelona. As United enter the competition’s last four for the first time in five years, Ferguson seems ready to nurse any nostalgia the 2007 run evokes. Now, as then, United will face Italian teams in the last eight and in the last four.

“In 1999, of course, we played Inter in the quarters and then Juventus in the semi-final,” he recalls. “There was no bigger test than Juventus at that time. To win after going 2-0 down was an incredible performance, it put us over the threshold in terms of European football.” Ancelotti is Milan’s head coach now and has taken them to two Champions League finals, winning one. Ferguson will look at him differently a week on Tuesday. “Milan have pride and Ancelotti knows how to utilise that,” believes the United manager. “It’ll be a great game, I’m sure of that.” Invited to stroll again down memory lane, Ferguson detected further promising omens. A dramatic, emphatic FA Cup semi-final win against Arsenal had emboldened the 1999 United ahead of the Juve expedition. Might the 7-1 rout of Roma work likewise? “I think Tuesday’s performance will have given our players great confidence, although Milan have great experience.” Here Ferguson reached for the defining example: “Maldini, marvel-lous player. Is he 91 or is he 92? He seems to go on for ever. ”

For the record, Paolo Maldini has seen 39 Christmases, and he is two years older than when he was the second most senior man in a defence that saw out Milan’s 180 minutes without conceding a goal against United in the knockout stage of the 2004-05 Champions League. The 11 who completed Milan’s win — 2-0 on aggregate — in March 2005 included Alessandro Costacurta, then in his 39th year. It included Cafu, 34, Jaap Stam, 32, and Alessandro Nesta, 29. Plus Maldini. Nearly 26 months later, Milan are still taking Costacurta, 40, Cafu, 36, Maldini, 38 and Nesta, 31, with them to safeguard tricky away legs in the Champions League.

Ferguson, who last Wednesday watched Milan beat Bayern Munich 2-0 in Bavaria, knows to overstress the rossoneri’s age is to mislead. Costacurta gets the rarest of canters these days. Cafu was only a substitute against Bayern.

“Most of them are there from two years ago,” noted Ferguson, “but with different full-backs. And Inzaghi was up front against Bayern instead of Cre-spo, but all the other players remain the same.” Inzaghi, though, is an old foe. He scored twice for Juventus in that epic 1999 semi-final. But the really good news for United is that when he looks at this Milan on April 24, Ferguson will see one fearful name missing.

Ronaldo — that’s the other Ronaldo, the one from Brazil, signed in January — is cup-tied. The Milan who required extra-time to beat Celtic after a goal-less 180 minutes in the last 16, are taking on Europe without their most gifted finisher.

Their goals often come from deeper, from Kaka, the competition’s leading scorer, and Clarence Seedorf. “They are older, no question,” insisted Ferguson, although his chief interest was in pointing out that so are United. “Two years ago against Milan, we missed six or seven chances per match. We can’t afford to do that again. So we have got something to fall back on in terms of the experience of that particular tie.”