AC Milan 0-0 Newcastle: Nick Pope is the hero as Eddie Howe’s men battle to a hard-fought point at the San Siro on their Champions League return

Newcastle will play better than this in Europe this season and lose. It was their first Champions League match in twenty years and it was a bewildering and vaguely traumatic experience at times.

Goalkeeper Nick Pope was by far Eddie Howe’s best player. There were few other contenders on a night when they were overrun and outplayed by AC Milan.

But somehow Newcastle didn’t lose. They did not succumb to the waves of red and black. And so their Champions League journey has strangely started with a valuable away point and something to build on.

This was never going to be easy. A night of real significance for Newcastle, taking place in one of the true cathedrals of European football. Milan may not have a great team these days. The Serie A is no longer the high-end environment it once was. But it’s still the San Siro. It still means something.

So this was an evening where ‘challenge’ was written all over for Newcastle. We just expected them to be a little better than this, that’s all. When Dan Burn played a simple pass with two minutes to go, straight after play, the home fans howled in derision.

This was certainly not the Newcastle we know. This was not the energetic side that Howe presented to the Premier League. Here they were riddled with errors and self-harming.

They did not lack effort or dedication and they still threw bodies towards shots at death. They also did not look particularly well organized and appeared to have traveled without much of a plan of attack.

To that end, they failed to get a shot on target all night until Sean Longstaff almost wrote the most unexpected payoff line of all time with a shot touched by Milan goalkeeper Marco Sportiello deep into extra time.

Sandro Tonali – a Milan player until the summer – had a particularly bad night as Milan’s midfielders broke away and ran past him during the 72 minutes Howe left him on the pitch.

He received applause off the pitch when he was substituted, but much of that came from the home fans. They don’t forget good players here and one of them, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, was in the stands. Ibrahimovic would have liked his chances here and he is now 41.

For Newcastle, the first half was an utterly terrifying experience. The only plus was that there were no goals in it. After waiting so long to get back on this stage, Newcastle looked underprepared and overwhelmed. Sometimes it was really something to see.

Milan – beaten 5-1 here this weekend by neighbors Inter – reached the semi-finals of the Champions League last season, but are far from the strongest team in Europe. They are indeed a far cry from the level they once occupied.

Yet here they looked like world beaters, surging forward at will. Tonali drowned in the middle of Newcastle’s midfield. At one point, after seeing Milan’s former Chelsea midfielder Ruben Loftus-Cheek charge past him and shoot over him, he turned to Howe because he thought Newcastle’s back four had to do his job for him . They did not.

Pope was busy in the Newcastle goal. He made seven saves in the first half, five in a frantic six-minute spell around the quarter-hour mark.

Newcastle, backed by 4,000 supporters standing tall behind the goal they were defending, were okay in the first ten minutes. It was a nothing game for a while.

But once Milan found a gear, Newcastle really started to struggle. Howe’s team couldn’t stop the overload and overlap. They could not close the huge gaps in their own midfield. At times they seemed unable to do even the most basic work outside of possession.

Milan’s left midfielder Tommaso Pobega was the first to work Pope, driving low from distance in the 13th minute. When the ball came back, Pope tipped Samu Chukwueze’s header over the crossbar.

Former Chelsea and Arsenal striker Olivier Giroud then tried to take advantage of a pinball shot in the penalty area, but Pope was able to smother it. As a sense of chaos began to be felt in Newcastle’s penalty area, captain Kieran Trippier appealed for calm, but it was in vain. A Loftus-Cheek header at the far post almost got Pobega into trouble before Rade Krunic fired from 25 yards and once Pope slipped the ball over the top.

From this corner – still with only 18 minutes played – left back Theo Hernandez should have scored. This should have been the moment when Newcastle were given a real penalty.

He was completely inconspicuous as he headed towards goal from ten yards, but as the ball bounced down and up off the pitch he was just close enough for the goalkeeper to somehow guide it over the crossbar again. It was a good response, Pope aside. And if the ball had arrived a meter either side – as it should have – then Milan would indeed have been in the lead.

Newcastle’s forays at the other end were limited. Alexander Isak occasionally dropped deep in search of possession, while on the left Anthony Gordon looked like he had what it took to worry Milan captain Davide Calabria. However, gaining enough ball possession was something completely different.

Howe’s team appealed for a penalty when Longstaff went down under the mildest of pressure, but they were soon almost undone at the other end.

Giroud might have done better than to direct Hernandez’s low cross wide of the near post before outstandingly eye-catching striker Rafael Leao ran diagonally across the pitch from left to right, only to fall over his own feet as he tried to pass the ball from seven meters towards the goal.

It would have been an outrageous finish and perhaps something more conventional would have done the trick on reflection. Pobega, meanwhile, followed up the loose ball and his shot was cleared off the line by Jacob Murphy.

The second half was less daunting for Howe and his players. Milan lost a bit of their energy and with it their threat as the night progressed. Nevertheless, they were still the dominant force and had even more chances to win the match.

Substitute Tijjani Reijnders – coming on for Pobega on the hour mark – ran straight through the center of the Newcastle defense shortly after entering the field and pulled off a low save from Pope. In reality, the shot did not match the sharpness of the run. Ten minutes later, another substitute, Alessandro Florenzi, produced a wonderful cross as he advanced from right back and Rafael Leao’s diving header sent the ball half a foot over the corner of the far post and the crossbar. That would have been a goal.

The match wasn’t played at such a frenetic pace going into the final third and that suited Newcastle well. Milan’s energy was electrifying at times in the opening period, but they slowly started to look like a team that needed a goal to really get them going again.

Howe made some changes of his own one warm early evening. Miguel Almiron, Callum Wilson and young Elliot Anderson all came into action to help Newcastle in the opposition half. Yet the area belonged to Milan. That was something that hadn’t changed all night.

The statistics underlined the superiority of the home team. Pope had been Newcastle’s busiest player, while Howe’s team never threatened.

With ten minutes to go, two back-to-back defensive blocks from Newcastle were needed. Once again the hopes of the home fans began to rise. Then, with just four minutes to go, Longstaff denied Christian Pulisic with another flying block. As Newcastle stuck to their point, their efforts could not be faulted.