AC Milan gets a full payback
An epic rematch in Olympic Stadium became a salve for AC Milan of Italy, which certainly looked healed Wednesday night as its players hugged, hopped and took their new European Champions League trophy over to their delirious fans.
They had replaced 2-year-old nightmarish memories with fresh sublime ones, defeating Liverpool, 2-1, in the world’s biggest club soccer game to avenge a renowned and ghoulish defeat in 2005.
That night in Istanbul, Turkey, also starred Liverpool, which helped AC Milan waste a 3-0 halftime lead and won its own fifth European title in a penalty shootout when 120 minutes left the clubs tied, 3-3.
Just across the Aegean Sea on this May night, AC Milan forged a whole bushel of new realities. It added a seventh European title and it crept within two titles of first-place Real Madrid in the 52-year-old, continent-wide competition.
AC Milan also foiled England in England’s year, having eliminated Manchester United and Liverpool from among England’s three semifinalists. It cemented itself as the contemporary titan, having won five of the last 19 titles, all with 38-year-old showpiece defender Paolo Maldini, who received the giant cup and whisked it into the air.
“It’s the complete opposite,” said the losing captain, Steven Gerrard, and with 74,000 spectators plus a whole continent looking on, soccer again showcased its delicious meanness.
The sport’s capriciousness lent a starring role to one Filippo Inzaghi, a 33-year-old striker/enigma who wound up scoring AC Milan’s goals. Inzaghi produced both a fluke that startled Liverpool and a beaut that all but killed it off.
The fluke came in the 45th minute just after Liverpool’s Xabi Alonso knocked down Kaka, the Brazilian who tops many a best-players-in-the-world list. Andrea Pirlo’s free kick curled around the right of the Liverpool wall, but goalkeeper Pepe Reina slid over to block, but then the ball grazed off Inzaghi’s left shoulder, back toward the middle and in.
The beaut came in the 82nd minute and owed largely to Kaka, whose through ball seemed to debilitate three defenders as it slid on the right side to Inzaghi, who peeled away from traffic to receive. Alone with the goalkeeper, he moved along to the last possible angle before nudging it under Reina’s dive until it rolled slowly in.
That gave AC Milan a 2-0 lead that seemed insurmountable even if nobody could blame the audience for not assuming so. In the 89th minute, a corner from Liverpool’s Jermaine Pennant glanced off two players over to the right and to Dirk Kuyt, whose header halved the deficit.
Liverpool’s final two charges during the three minutes of added time forged no threat, unlike Jermaine Pennant’s threat on the right in the 10th minute, which Dida saved with his outstretched right hand; or Xabi Alonso’s threat from 25 yards in the 26th minute, which surpassed Dida but strayed just left; or Gerrard’s threat past Alessandro Nesta into the left side of the box in the 62nd minute, which Dida saved more easily with his grounded left hand.
The team that mastered the first half trailed at halftime, the team that created more chances all told lost (that a reprise of 2005), and the team briefly disqualified from the 2006-07 Champions League from the Italian game-fixing scandal, but reinstated on appeal, won the whole thing.
The AC Milan section began a long fete with a fete to match already started back home, and the players posed with their cup and their team president, Silvio Berlusconi, the former prime minister of Italy.
Gerrard, gutted, still embraced Gennaro Gattuso, the opponent he’d mocked in his autobiography, and Gattuso, in turn, said the Istanbul nightmare would remain with him, even if his eyes and all eyes around him made it look freshly buried.
