Gianluca Vialli made me choke up. And to think, this wasn't my first rodeo. Between World Cup finals, Champions League finals and Europa League finals, playoff finals, domestic cup finals, European Championship and Copa America finals ... I'm well north of 60 in a professional capacity.

When you have the privilege of doing what I do for a living, you try to stay professional as best you can, leaving emotion to one side. It's not always easy, not when you love this game and the people around it, not when you bear witness to the emotional transport of hundreds of millions of people around the world, not when you understand that it is one of the common threads of humanity.