AC Milan
ARTICLE BY KloppiteE
Hahahaha. Ok, I should be asleep now but you’ve sparked me …..
For anyone interested, now for something completely different …..
Some background on why Milan means so much to me and my love affair with the Rossoneri.
It all started back in April 1989, at the lowest ebb of both my young teenage life to that date and since. On a Wednesday evening, sat watching the sadly no longer BBC midweek sports highlight/ roundup show ‘Sportsnight.’ I was up late that night, as I had been in pretty much traumatised shock not wanting to sleep since the life changing events I’d gone through on the Saturday in Sheffield; when the main game of the programme was highlights of AC Milan’s European Cup semi final against Real Madrid. (A game Sacchi’s wonderful Milan side of the 3 Dutchmen won 5-0.). But it wasn’t the football that so grabbed me as I blankly watched. It was the Milanese support in Northern Italy, a region and club with, at that time, absolutely NO connection to my home City and club, Liverpool, that utterly blew me away and brought tears of happiness to my eyes to replace the many of sadness the previous 5 days. For 6 minutes into the game, the exact time our own ill fated FA Cup semi final had been stopped as the horror unfolded at Hillsborough, they had organised for the officials to stop their tie, the European Cup semi final, and hold a minutes silence in respect of our loss. (Or ‘applause’, as is the custom in Italy.). As if that wasn’t stunningly poignant enough, to then hear, in broken English, our anthem ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ cascading down from the packed San Siro stands (Seriously. You Tube it) ….. I can’t begin to tell you how much I and many others needed that and how much it started my reconnection to a game I just didn’t want ANYTHING to do with at that point.
And so began a now 32 year and counting love affair of my own with one of the VERY few football clubs we look up to in Europe. AC Milan. And a life long bond between the two clubs and more so the 2 sets of fans that is real strong to this day. Liverpool are Milan’s ‘English’ club. A ‘second’, foreign club if you like for the majority of AC fans. And the respect is reciprocated from a good many in Liverpool which has only intensified from the fantastic times had and new friendships formed through the 2 clubs meetings in the 2005 and 2007 Champions League finals in Istanbul and Athens respectively. And I consider myself exceptionally fortunate to of been drawn to Milan through an unbelievable ‘golden age’ of some of the greatest players and teams the game has ever seen. (Marco Van Basten is my all time favourite non-Liverpool player.). In an unparalleled era of success under all time great managers like Arrigo Sacchi, Fabio Capello and my favourite Carlo Ancelotti. (Hard to believe I watched him equal the great Bob Paisley as the only man to manage teams to 3 European Cup wins a few years ago after I grew up watching him play. Kind of makes one feel pretty old. Haha.).
I’ve personally gotten the Milan bug to such an extent that when Liverpool played Inter in the 2008 Champions League last 16, I refused to go to the San Siro for the second leg on the basis that ‘it just wouldn’t be the same watching Inter there and not Milan.’ In the same stadium! Go figure? Haha. And trust me when I say for a seasoned European traveller, that was a REAL hard thing for me to do. (And for what its worth, I’m told by equally seasoned European travelling friends that the San Siro is still the single best stadium they’ve ever had the privilege of watching L’pool in. And man have we been to most all the biggest and best the World has to offer.). It’d be sods law we draw them this season now they’re finally back in the CL and we can’t travel!
Apologies on the length of that and thank you for indulging me if you’ve read this far. I just wanted to give you a small insight into the back story of a Liverpudlians second love in Northern Italy.
As you know, I’m not exactly laconic when I start typing haha
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