Posts Tagged Maldini
2008 Champions League Round of 16 ~ AC Milan vs Arsenal (16m Highlights)
Posted by 4Dfoot in Highlights on February 14, 2012
This match, to many, looked like a foregone conclusion. Arsenal, the team known for its chronic lack of success in Europe, playing against AC Milan, one of Europe’s most successful sides. History would predict a clinical victory for the Italians.
One might argue that patterns are there to be broken, but did Arsenal even have the quality to create an upset in San Siro? The Milanese were, after all, the reigning champions of Europe. And in Kaká they had the world footballer of the year. In Maldini and Nesta a defensive duo of immense quality and experience. In Pirlo and Gattuso a perfect midfield pairing. And the veteran Inzaghi and the young Pato seemed a guarantee for goals.
Arsenal really had no chance.
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1994 Champions League Final ~ AC Milan vs Barcelona (49 min HL)
Posted by 4Dfoot in Full Classic Matches, Highlights on February 8, 2012
The wait had been long. The two dominant sides of the early 90′s had evaded each other for far too long.
Sure, AC Milan had triumphed over Barcelona in 1989 UEFA Super Cup, but Cruyff’s Dream Team was still in its infancy then.
Five years onward, AC Milan and Barcelona finally clashed, in the most suitable of occassions: The Champions League final.
Milan, however, was no longer the side it had been. The three Dutch stars – Rijkaard, Van Basten, Gullit – were gone. Captain Baresi and the new talent Lentini were injured. And under Capello, Milan’s play wasn’t as impressive as it had been under Arrigo Sacchi.
Barcelona on the other hand looked better than ever. They had just won La Liga for the fourth time in succession. And in Romário, the Catalans had the world’s greatest goalscorer.
It was with casual self-confidence therefore that Cruyff declared that Milan were a shadow of their former self and that Barcelona would easily win…
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2005 Champions League Final ~ AC Milan vs Liverpool (Full Classic Match)
Posted by 4Dfoot in Full Classic Matches on January 30, 2012
Finals are all too often tedious affairs. Restricted by nerves and scared to make mistakes, contestants in a final frequently opt for a risk-free strategy. The result is a rather uneventful, anti-climactic end to a competition.
But there are some exceptions to this rule. Games where the tension that comes naturally to a final is spurred to new heights by sequences of incredible drama.
Chief among these exceptions is the 2005 Champions League final.
Pitting a strong AC Milan side – starring a young Kaká behind Crespo and Shevchenko – against a combative Liverpool side built around Steven Gerrard, it was a classic Italy vs England battle. Class versus fighting spirit. Which would come out on top?
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All-Time AC Milan Team
Posted by 4Dfoot in Best of All Time on November 27, 2011
Next to Real Madrid, AC Milan is Europe’s most successful club. Winning 18 Scudetto’s, 7 Champions Leagues and 4 Club World Cups can only be done when you’ve got the best of the best players at your disposal.
Indeed, Milan had featured brilliant players throughout its history.
Attacking players like Nordahl, Altafini, Weah, Kaká, Rivera, Gullit, Shevchenko, and Van Basten, to name a few.
Which of these would fit in an All-Time Milan XI?
2002 World Cup Round of 16 ~ South-Korea vs Italy (Full Classic Match)
Posted by 4Dfoot in Full Classic Matches on November 18, 2011
A match that, for very different reasons, left a deep impression on the footballing memory of both Italy and South-Korea.
The South-Koreans, as host of the 2002 World Cup, were happy they’d survived the groups. Coached by Guus Hiddink, the Koreans played an energetic and organized brand of football reminiscent of the legendary 1966 North-Korean side.
That 1966 team had famously been defeated by Portugal, but Hiddink’s South Korea took revenge in the name of their Northern brethren by destroying the Portugal of Figo and Rui Costa in the final group match.
It meant they’d now have to face Italy. The very same country that had been beaten by the North Koreans 36 years before.
For Italy, the painful memory of defeat to North-Korea was slowly beginning to fade. Although Italians still call any disastrous defeat of their national team “another Korea”, that original event was seen as an unlucky incident that happened many years ago in a time when injured players couldn’t be replaced. Surely, today’s Italy, with experienced stars like Buffon, Maldini,Totti, Del Piero and Vieri, could never be defeated by North-Koreans.
But they faced another Korea now.
11-11-11 ~ The Best 11 of all time
Posted by 4Dfoot in Articles, Best of All Time on November 11, 2011
In the near future, this website will add a page dedicated to lists and formations of the greatest players of all time. And to get a taste of what’s to come, what better way to celebrate 11-11-11 than by making a line-up of the best 11 of all time?
The challenge with ‘best ever’ formations is selecting the best players without creating a ridiculous team that has 11 strikers or playmakers. The objective is to make a line-up that can actually work.
That means making hard choices. You can’t have Zidane, Cruyff, Maradona, Platini, Zico and Di Stefano all in one team. Only retired players are included, so that, at least, saves me a head ache over Messi’s position.
So who made the cut?
1993 Intercontinental Cup ~ AC Milan vs São Paulo FC (Full Classic Match)
Posted by 4Dfoot in Full Classic Matches on November 3, 2011
There was no confrontation between the winner of the Champions League and the winner of the Copa Libertadores in 1993. The team that had won that year’s Champions League, the great Olympique Marseille of Desailly, Deschamps, Boksic, Voller and Abedi Pele, had been banned after it was found guilty of bribing practises. Its place in the Intercontinental / Toyota Cup would be taken by a team that was perhaps even better: AC Milan. The Italians might have lost the ’93 final, they would go on to win the ’94 Champions League.
AC Milan were not the side of the late 80′s, however. The famous Dutch trio was gone. Gullit had been sold to Sampdoria, Rijkaard to Ajax and Van Basten had effectively retired due to injury problems. But the Italian core was still there: Baresi, Maldini, Costacurta, Albertini, Donadoni. They were aided by two Frenchmen with, ironnically, a history at Olympique Marseille: Marcel Desailly and Jean-Pierre Papin.
But would that line of legends be enough to defeat the fabulous São Paulo FC? Coached by Tele Santana, SPFC had impressively beaten Johan Cruyff’s Barcelona Dreamteam a year earlier in the Intercontinental Cup. Their star player Rai had left for Paris Saint German, but Leonardo (the later AC Milan player and coach), now directed affairs on midfield. Further famous names such as Cafu, Toninho Cerezo and Juninho Paulista meant that Milan would face an uphill challenge to beat this tremendous side.
1989 European Cup Semi-Final ~ AC Milan vs Real Madrid (Full Classic Match)
Posted by 4Dfoot in Full Classic Matches on October 16, 2011
The monopoly on European football that Barcelona enjoys today, mirrors the iron grip AC Milan had over Europe in the late 80′s. The one game that demonstrates this more than anything is the second leg of the 1989 European Cup Semi-Final. The first leg had ended in 1-1, and now the two teams moved the battlefield to Milan’s San Siro stadium. It was here that Sacchi’s Milan gave a master class in modern football. Real Madrid could count on greats such as Hugo Sanchez, Emilio Butragueño and Bernd Schuster, but they proved no match for a rampant Milan, whose Italian core of Baresi, Costacurta, Maldini, Ancelotti and Donadoni was enhanced by the three greatest Dutchmen of their era: Gullit, Rijkaard and Van Basten.
Line-ups:
AC Milan
Galli – Tassotti, Baresi, Costacurta, Maldini – Donadoni, Colombo, Rijkaard, Ancelotti – Gullit, Van Basten
Coach: Arrigo Sacchi
Real Madrid
Buyo – Llorente, Sanchis, Chendo, Gordillo – Gallego, Schuster, Vazquez, Michel – Butragueño, Sanchez
Coach: Leo Beenhakker
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