The whistle blew and Neapolitans flooded the streets, hooting cars horns and waving flags
Kick-off was announced by a fusillade of fireworks in green, red and white along the seaboard of the Gulf of Naples, after which the crowds turned their backs on the necklace of lights along the bay below Vesuvius, and a big fat rising blood-moon, to the screens outside the bars along the waterfront.
And when it was over, they seemed to come from nowhere, shattering the silence of concentration in which a sweltering night had been wrapped for two hours: cars, scooters and trucks waving the flags, tricoloured and blue, and hooting to kingdom come, as is the custom.
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