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FORZA MILAN
By Hasan Saiyid
I must admit, Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s confession of being tired of football came as a surprise to me. There have been times in his short Milan career during which he has looked jaded, but I attributed those to the exhaustion and frustration that a footballer often feels during a game–and, of course, to his generally peevish disposition. After all, not everyone can wear a broad grin like Cafu or remain unruffled like Paolo Maldini when things don’t go their way.
Ibrahimovic’s candour in admitting his weariness of football is startling, but not completely unprecedented. Carlos Tevez, currently engulfed by widespread censure for seemingly refusing to come on during Manchester City’s Champions League encounter against Bayern Munich, said something similar in the late fall of 2009, deploring the greed and opportunism in football. Yet, as far as I can tell, the Argentinian’s Bartleby the Scrivener-style defiance of Roberto Mancini does not seem to be an extension of those musings.
It is easy and common to dismiss footballers as being many things: overpaid, spoilt, thankless, and arrogant (and when Cristiano Ronaldo sneers at the masses by saying he is booed “because he is handsome, rich, and great at football” those dismissals gain prominence). The reflexive reaction of some to Ibrahimovic’s frank admissions will undoubtedly be of that variety. However, there is something undeniably refreshing about Ibrahimovic’s cynicism, which complements his conduct and career.
Ibrahimovic has never been the one not to speak his mind. This is the same player, who at twenty-two tartly announced his arrival at Juventus from Ajax, saying “that he is no one’s sub.” When he left Inter for Barcelona in 2009, he did not waste any time in criticizing the overtly tactical nature of Italian football, almost seething at how it “ruined” the sport. No one should expect Ibrahimovic to fawn on his employers, and no one should really expect him to think about anyone other than himself when he talks about his relationship to football. His is a platitude-free zone, in which he has always been the most important figure.
“I feel that it is not good to stay with one club too long,” Ibrahimovic told La Gazzetta dello Sport earlier this year. “You can get complacent.”
After his latest interview, however, it seems that it is not complacency but the diminishing resilience of his body, the fact that he thinks he is “getting old,” which has prompted Ibrahimovic to speak like an arthritic, leather-skinned veteran nearing fourty. For Ibrahimovic, who turned thirty just this month, speaking so fatalistically shows a side at odds with the all-action forward who inadvertently drop-kicked Marco Materazzi during the Milan derby just last season (Zinedine Zidane must have chortled). But behind the admission is also a dependable and typically ugly honesty, upheld unapologetically by self-regard. Behind it is not just a streamlined 6’4″ frame that is tiring, but also a mental strain that may come at the end of even a successful career like Ibrahimovic’s (even if no European glory, eight domestic titles in a row after all).
Not to anyone’s surprise, footballers have often contemplated retirement or retired prematurely due to physical injuries. Even at Ibrahomvic’s current club Milan, former great Marco van Basten retired at just twenty-eight in 1995, unable to overcome a persistent ankle problem. However, it is Ibrahimovic’s emphasis on the mental aspect that is compelling. He has had injuries in his career, but none the seriousness of Brazil’s Ronaldo or of Alessandro Del Piero, the latter still playing for Juventus at almost thirty-seven. Many fans and clubs lose patience with footballers over injuries, but Ibrahimovic has shown that players can lose patience with football altogether for personal reasons separate from physical problems.
Former Germany player Sebastian Deisler suffered ruinous ligament injuries, which ultimately curtailed his career at the age of twenty-seven. However, it was his well-documented depression at Bayern Munich that also contributed to his early retirement. Judging by the swagger with which Ibrahimovic acquits himself, many may think he does not have the capacity to be melancholic. However, his interview has shown that despite having riches and a career that has seen him rise from his home-city club of Malmo to Milan, Ibrahimovic, like other footballers, can get tired of even the sport that has afforded him his lifestyle.
Of course, it is Milan who will be now reckoning with Ibrahimovic’s announcement. Chances are that Ibrahimovic will still continue to be absolutely vital for Milan this season, as he was in the previous. However, in the event that he is not, you can almost certainly expect people will question his commitment. Not that Ibrahimovic would care one way or the other.
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Hasan Saiyid blogs at http://www.notevenanoriundo.com. You can also find him on twitter.com/notevenoriundo
By Hasan Saiyid
It’s a case of a gift and an identikit. Those are two of the few things we really know about Milan’s transfer market this summer. Yet, for journalists and Milan fans, the summer of 2011 is teeming with transfer speculation despite and because of those two factors, which promise much but reveal little.
First, the club’s supremo Silvio Berlusconi has promised a regalo, a gift, for the Milan fans. Secondly, Milan coach Massimiliano Allegri has revealed an identikit of the player, saying that the player may have thick hair, blue eyes, and a height of 183 centimetres. The revelation of the desired attributes have sparked a virtual manhunt on internet forums. Every day, a player matching the description is mentioned. Axel Witsel, Marek Hamsik, Daniele De Rossi…
What remains certain is that this summer will not just conclude with the signings of Philippe Mexes and Taye Taiwo. Milan have just won the Scudetto and have identified the trivial matter of the Champions League as their next target. The current squad is certainly good enough to defend the Italian title, but to compete in Europe, Milan need a signing that will give them a quality that cannot be legislated for, that mercurial ability to turn a game on its head, an ability they had with a player like Kaka.
This team may actually be more complete in other departments than the team that won the Champions League in 2007. Yet, even with Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Robinho it lacks incisiveness, a fact conspicuously evident in Milan’s hollow capitulation to Tottenham this season.
As far as transfer markets go, this summer may be Milan’s most important one in nine years. At the end of the 2001-02 season, Carlo Ancelotti had ensured that Milan would qualify, by the smallest of margins, for the Champions League. In preparation for Europe, Milan conducted a memorable transfer campaign, bringing in players like Clarence Seedorf and John Dahl Tomasson to join the likes of Andrea Pirlo, Rui Costa, and Filippo Inzaghi, all three of whom were purchased a year earlier. Yet, it was one salient transfer in 2002 that punctuated both Milan’s intent and the core of the team that would see the club lift the Champions League a year later. On a personal level, it was a transfer that went a long way to mitigate the pain of the 2002 World Cup.
For me, Italy’s ludicrous World Cup campaign in the Far East loomed over the summer of 2002 as a melancholic reminder that the failure of the national team could now be added to other problems afflicting Italian football. The Azzurri, it seemed, were only obliging to an encroaching sense of malaise in the game.
Things were not looking good. The two bigger clubs of the country, Lazio and Fiorentina were in disparate but desperate levels of financial trouble. Cinema producer and Fiorentina owner Vittorio Cecchi Gori, whose company produced the classic Life is Beautiful, had managed a ugly denouement for the club. Despite devastating debts, investigations into his false accounting, and a collapsing empire, Cecchi Gori did not sell Fiorentina, forcing the already-relegated club to liquidation and a new beginning in Serie C2.
Lazio’s president Sergio Cragnotti and his Turin-based food conglomerate Cirio were facing fiscal problems of their own. However, Lazio’s crisis was not acutely existential; hence stars like Hernan Crespo and homegrown central-defender and captain Alessandro Nesta were put on the market to ease the club’s trials.
Milan were not exactly furtive when it came to their interest in Nesta. The turbulent negotiations between Milan and Lazio went on for much of August, and it was not until the last day of the transfer window that Milan announced they had signed the Rome-born player, who was twenty-six at the time. The deal was worth 31 million euros, a sum to be paid to Lazio over three years, and came after the Biancoceleste had rejected a bid of 26 million euros earlier in the month.
Nesta’s arrival certainly lifted some of my summer gloom. However, implicit in his transfer was an indictment of the financial mess that Italian football was in. Lazio and Fiorentina were part of La Sette Sorelle (The Seven Sisters), a group that consisted of the movers and shakers of Italian football during the 1990s and early 2000s (Milan, Juventus, Inter, Parma, and Roma were the other clubs). To see two of Italy’s bigger clubs flail and even dissolve in one case was astonishing, depressing, but, sadly, predictable.
Apart from being symptomatic of systemic financial problems in Italian football, Nesta’s transfer also marked a watershed in Milan’s transfer dealings. That is, it combined three qualities that no Milan transfer have had since.
First, Nesta cost 31 million euros, a figure Milan have not spent on any player since 2002, let alone a defender. Milan vice-president Adriano Galliani and sporting director Ariedo Braida have assidiously searched for bargains, promising youth, and free transfers, and to their credit the strategy has been largely functional. The transfers that have demanded a prominently high fee since Nesta have been of Alberto Gilardino (24 million euros), Robinho (18 million euros), and Zlatan Ibrahimovic (24 million euros, should Milan choose to buy him), and not one of them required a greater outlay than Nesta.
Secondly, Nesta came to Milan at the peak of his powers. There have been many big names that have arrived at Milan since Nesta, but their signings were qualified by different reasons. Ronaldo arrived from Real Madrid with brittle knees and his erratically best years behind him. The snap of his knee in February 2008 during a game between Milan and Livorno was an emphatic signal that the player was now finished at the highest level, and that Milan’s faith in him was bizarrely optimistic. His compatriot Ronaldinho may have been slightly luckier with injuries and only twenty-eight when he came to Milan, but he was a player who had had a surfeit of success in football, and his performances for Milan were tellingly listless. Finally, and this one is perhaps arguable, Ibrahimovic arrived last summer as a player beginning his descent from the peak. Though he was central to Milan’s Scudetto this past season, he turns thirty this year.
Thirdly, Nesta arrived without any real doubts around his caliber. He had already won a Scudetto in a Lazio team that had the redoubtable talents of Diego Simeone and Pavel Nedved. He was also a mainstay in the Azzurri defence. In contrast, Gilardino was yet to establish himself at a big club, even if he rescued Parma from relegation in 2005. His subsequently nervous performances for Milan were an indication of a player who did not have the temperament for the unrelenting scrutiny that comes with playing for a club like Milan. Robinho has risen to the occasion at Milan this season, but he also impressed at Real Madrid before injuries and tactical decisions marginalized him. His stint at Manchester City was also sporadically brilliant before injuries hampered his progress. However, despite glimpses of his true worth, he was still seen as a player yet to live up to his billing when Milan purchased him last summer.
Of course, Nesta did not arrive entirely without any reservations surrounding him. The initial physical problems that he experienced at Lazio were an ominous signs of what was to come, and his Milan career has been continually interrupted by injuries. However, his transfer was unreservedly ambitious. Milan wanted the best defender on the market, and they got the best defender on the market. There was bargaining, yes, but there was no settling for any less than Nesta. The move paid off instantly as Nesta was critical to Milan’s Champions League triumph the following season, forming an intimidating defence with Paolo Maldini.
Eight summers later, Milan, still beaming from their fresh Scudetto win, are in search of a mezz’ala, a left-sided midfielder, and, while they may not admit it openly, a trequartista.
There have been a litany of names linked to Milan. For not an insignificant time, Cristiano Ronaldo was being mentioned as a possible transfer. The risible suggestion, impossible on so many levels that it is almost insulting to the reader to put it down in print, gained some legitimacy because Berlusconi had said in April that if Milan were to win the Scudetto they could sign “one or two great players, and one of them could be Ronaldo.”
Whether those were ramblings of a cynical prime-minister attempting to ease the political crisis immersing him, or of just a senile man in general is difficult to ascertain. What is certain is that Ronaldo is not coming. However, the fact that there was even speculation reveals a distinct obliviousness on part of Milan fans.
The truth is, Milan are not in the position to buy a player like Ronaldo despite Berlusconi’s wealth. Apart from the fact that Berlusconi will not pay a lurid amount of money for the Portuguese, he also does not want to pay that much money. Few could fault him for at least attempting to appear partially sane in an increasingly grotesque transfer market and as prime-minister of a country struggling with recession. Some other factors also contribute to Berlusconi’s frugality, including perhaps a waning interest in the club, advanced years, and children, Piersilvio and Barbara, who want him to be more cerebral and less sentimental when it comes to the club.
Of course, the advent of the Financial Fair Play (FFP) rules have given Berlusconi an alibi to remain financially responsible. And few could fault him there as well.
If the rules are even applied to the spirit of the law and not to the letter, any gargantuan signings in the future look impossible for Milan. The rules are fairly unequivocal. UEFA will permit clubs to have losses of 45 million euros between the years 2012 and 2015. After that, clubs can still have losses of 30 million euros over three years, before the allowance of losses is restricted further for future years. UEFA is threatening to deny clubs entry into European competition if they do not follow the rules.
The dismaying fact for Milan fans, and Inter fans as well, is that the rules do not permit a rich owner investing money directly into the club. And for those who think the rules can be bypassed by an owner’s company signing a lucrative sponsorship deal with the club will be disappointed. Sponsorship deals must be agreed upon at market price.
Galliani has already said that the FFP rules “hurt Italy,” but it is the limited sources of revenue that is the real bane of Serie A. For example, Milan will continue to rent the Stadio Giuseppe Meazza from the city council until 2016, meaning they cannot purchase and refurbish the dilapidated mess that the stadium, which is one of the better stadia in Italy, has become to earn more money from naming rights, corporate hospitality etc. (this article is not a financial report on Milan, but if you are interested in that aspect, see Swiss Ramble’s excellent piece).
When Milan signed Nesta, Serie A had clubs in precarious financial positions. Currently, while Serie A clubs in general may be operating in a marginally more salutary context, Milan are having to reconcile chastening financial realities with the demands of the fans.
Some fans, and not an insignificant amount I can assure you, still believe that Milan will sign Cesc Fabregas from Arsenal. If Milan do end up doing so, then the club’s hierarchy may know something that we do not. Sure, there are ways to get around the FFP rules, but to compete with the likes of Barcelona (Fabregas’s most likely destination if he is to move) without your owner’s money and half the revenue seems impossible.
Yes, it seems to be so. However, even with all the overwhelming obstacles, there is an eerie, not entirely unprecedented surreptitiousness around Milan’s dealings this summer. Somehow, despite the odds, fans are still expecting a signing that will be more luminous than players like Hasmik, Ganso, or Alberto Aquilani. Fabregas would be incandescent. And not just because he is a star–admittedly it helps–but also because he has the attributes and the quality to be vital for Milan in a creative role.
Yet how would that be possible given all that has been discussed? In this year’s June edition of World Soccer, Nick Bidwell and Gavin Hamilton indicate that there is less “financial transparency” in Italy, and that “English clubs have come under greater scrutiny simply because they are more open about their finances” (24). To land a player like Fabregas with the FFP rules in place will not only involve a large outlay (more than 35 million euros) from Milan, but also a certain secrecy around their finances. Further, if the cost of a big signing is amortized over a few years, then Milan will feel the financial burden to be less onerous. Consider, too, that the club may be relying on a certain flexibility when the rules actually come into effect. After all, UEFA have indicated that clubs incurring greater losses than the permitted amount may be allowed to compete if their losses are showing signs of decreasing.
If Berlusconi is to make a large investment, this year seems to be the most opportune summer to do so, and not just because the FFP rules are yet to take full effect. Berlusconi’s political career, for which he has often used Milan, and, more recently, which he has privileged over the club, appears to be teetering. Just this week, he lost a key vote, indicating that the man has squandered the confidence of a good portion of the Italian public. A huge signing would be some solace for him, briefly galvanizing a popularity that is even declining in the city of Milan.
For now, Milan fans are for the most part divided between those who are cynical and all too aware of the possible implications of FFP and those who are in willful denial of the rules. Then there are those like me, who are aware of the imminent changes, and Galliani’s proclamations of poverty, but who continue to dream.
Nine years ago Milan bought Nesta, and two Champions League and Scudetti later he still remains on guard. If Milan are to inaugurate another several years of European success, the right and the big signing has to arrive this summer.
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Hasan Saiyid blogs at http://www.notevenanoriundo.com. You can also find him on twitter.com/notevenoriundo
By Hasan Saiyid
Finally, Milan’s seven year wait for the Scudetto ends with an anti-climactic, but immensely welcomed 0-0 draw against Roma at the Stadio Olimpico.
For not an insignificant part of the last seven years, Milan vice-president Adriano Galliani has accommodated the Rossoneri’s domestic shortcomings by changing the subject. While journalists would be trying to make sense of another underwhelming performance in Serie A, Galliani would be talking about one of those positive mid-week European performances. Milan fans remember them because there were so many of them, and for a long time.
For the three seasons following their last Scudetto triumph, Galliani’s mantra of ‘The Champions League is our natural habitat’ had currency: Milan reached the final in 2005 (in which an epic collapse prevented them from winning), played the semi-final in 2006, and won in 2007. The record was staggering and allowed Milan to scorn the Scudetto, an attitude encapsulated in Massimo Ambrosini’s less than ambassadorial moment moment atop the 2007 Champions League celebration bus.
Of course, Milan’s contempt for the Scudetto challenge during the 2006-07 season was also determined by their points penalty for their involvement in Calciopoli, but the sentiment that Milan use the Champions League as an excuse has been voiced on many occasions. Four forgettable, indeed at times embarrassing, European seasons following 2007 systematically exposed an ideology and team in decline, and, most dismayingly, a management in apparent denial.
It was not until the summer of 2010 that club owner Silvio Berlusconi decided to ease his seemingly dedicated austerity. Perhaps it was Inter’s treble that rankled Berlusconi into action; whatever his motivation, Milan were reconfigured. In came Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Robinho, Kevin-Prince Boateng, and coach Massimiliano Allegri. Out went Klaas-Jan Huntelaar, Marco Borriello, coach Leonardo, and a counter-productive over-reliance on Senatori like Clarence Seedorf and Massimo Ambrosini.
The result has not been European success, but a much awaited Scudetto, won with a steady accretion of new ideas by Allegri and critical contributions from not only Ibrahimovic and Robinho, but also players like Ignazio Abate, Thiago Silva, and peripheral members like Rodney Strasser and Mario Yepes. Even players like Seedorf, who looked cynical last season, have been rejuvenated by Allegri’s method of distributing the burden of a season throughout his squad. Indeed, Milan’s Scudetto win is more telling than their 2007 Champions League win because it is a comprehensive assessment of the team throughout the season.
Allegri’s transition from Cagliari to Milan is laudable not just because he has landed a major trophy in his first season or because he could also achieve the double with a Coppa Italia win, but because he has assimilated in the peculiar glare of a big club so well. Many raised eyebrows when he rather than a tried and trusted name was selected in the summer of 2010 to lead Milan, but Allegri withstood that scrutiny and also parlous moments throughout the season. The way he handled a two-point lead going into the late-season derby against Inter was a definitive assessment of his Milan tenure.
His modesty throughout the campaign was edifying also.
“I’m fortunate to have come to Milan at a time when the club chose to invest,” said a self-effacing Allegri recently. Yes, certainly the investment has undoubtedly made his life easier, but it is under Allegri that Abate has become a marauding right-back that Milan have missed since Cafu, and under him Kevin-Prince Boateng was transformed into a convincing playmaker.
Milan’s success was built on a defence held together uncompromisingly by Christian Abbiati, Alessandro Nesta, and Thiago Silva, who was even deployed in midfield in January to adjust for an alarming shortage in the middle of the park. Further, when Nesta was injured, Yepes defied all expectation by ensuring that he deputized for him appropriately. Milan’s defence let in just twenty-three goals all season. Today’s 0-0 draw with Roma staged a microcosm of the defence’s modus operandi. Abbiati’s point-blank save on Mirko Vucinic, Alessandro Nesta’s crucial tackle to cut out Marco Cassetti’s searching ball, Thiago Silva’s unremitting attitude to prevent any danger, and Abate’s indefatigability on the flank have been a feature all season.
During the last several months, the midfield was in constant flux due to injuries or suspension, but the level of application did not dip. Gattuso, Ambrosini, Seedorf and Pirlo all contributed according to expectations, but so did Mark van Bommel and Urby Emanuelson, the latter seldom used but bringing an urgency to proceedings when chosen for action. Youth team products Strasser and Alexander Merkel also had memorable outings, which are promising signs for the future.
It was also in attack that Milan were tested all year. Boateng deserves to strain superlatives for revealing his previously latent playmaking skill, but also the ability to be direct in front of goal. Indeed, Boateng was more crucial in front of goal than he was in providing assists. He scored three goals and assisted in two, but he was menacing throughout the campaign, drawing defenders to himself to allow others to do the damage.
The damager-in-chief, even if some may not like to admit it after his recent suspension, was Ibrahimovic. The man, who has now won eight consecutive league titles in his itinerant career, managed eleven assists and fourteen goals. He also regularly scored winners when Milan looked dependent on him: a lobbed winner against Genoa, the penalty winner against Inter in the fall, and an outrageous bicycle-kick winner against Fiorentina stand out as his most memorable moments. Petulant, yes, but never ever insignificant.
The accusation that Milan were over-dependent on him proved somewhat unfounded in the second half of the season. Without Ibrahimovic, Milan managed to beat Inter 3-0, and it was Alexandre Pato who stole the show that day. Allegri took time to get the balance right, but he made sure that easy, critical labels would not apply to his team. Robinho covered ground all season, running forward with purpose, but also tracking back conscientiously. Where his finishing well short, his tempo and skill in tight spaces compensated, and it is a credit to Allegri that he got a player who many consider to be erratic to play so assiduously.
Milan’s glory also vindicates a carefully thought-out transfer strategy. Galliani’s decision to purchase Antonio Cassano in January meant that Milan did not miss the injured Filippo Inzaghi as much as they would have. Van Bommel’s addition initially looked disastrous, as he earned card after card, but ultimately Galliani was proven right to bring in the former Barcelona and Bayern Munich player. Van Bommel was finally able to channel his aggression productively in the latter part of the season.
Milan’s eighteenth Scudetto ends Inter’s hegemony over Serie A, which has stretched back to 2007, or 2006 if you consider that they were awarded that title because of Calciopoli. It also puts Milan level with Inter in terms of Scudetti won.
For those who think that the Serie A this year was not as competitive as in recent times, and therefore think that Milan’s win does not deserve plaudits, consider that Milan were playing in a league that consisted of the reigning European champions, a revived and possessed Napoli side led by Edinson Cavani, and a Lazio team that enjoyed the upper-reaches of the table all season. Throw in teams like Udinese and Roma, both of whom gave not only Milan but the entire Serie A all sorts of problems, and people may be then able to contextualize Milan’s emphatic win fairly and properly.
And now they must look to where they have always looked: the Champions League. Galliani has already stated that the goal is to get back on top of Europe. He has also added that the club’s transfer season will be worthy of champions. With a solid and capable team, tested over the rigours of a season, to build upon, Galliani may finally be able to see the value of winning not just in Europe, but also domestically.
After all, the Milan teams of Arrigo Sacchi and Fabio Capello did just that.
Hasan Saiyid blogs at http://www.notevenanoriundo.com. You can also find him on twitter.com/notevenoriundo
By Hasan Saiyid
Milan’s 3-0 derby win over Inter was a loud indication that the balance of power is starting to shift in Italy.
In a wonderfully ironic moment that only he can provide, Italy Prime Minister and Milan owner Silvio Berlusconi dismissed the idea of signing Mario Balotelli from Manchester City, claiming his “style of behaviour” was not congruent with his club’s propriety. Berlusconi was speaking after Milan’s demolition of Inter on Saturday and in the heat of the legal, political, and moral furor over his alleged sexual relations with a minor. Predictably, his veneer of probity drew snickers from many quarters.
There is a convincing case to be made that Berlusconi should never be allowed to pronounce on anyone’s conduct, but for all his hypocrisy and bluster, the balding misogynist has been commendably disciplined with the way he has run Milan.
Despite a few years of purse-tightening, Berlusconi’s outlay has brought the Rossoneri unprecedented success, a fact that the club routinely, and gratingly even for its own fans, announces and re-announces after a heavy domestic loss or European exit. Hands up if you have heard Milan CEO Adriano Galliani say the words, “we are the club with the most titles in the world.”
It is at worst selective, not deceptive, advertising. Milan have had many problems over the years, ranging from sterile years on the field, a brush with scandal that saw them docked points in 2006, and financial trials that have afflicted all Italian clubs, bankrupting some completely. However, throughout the twenty-five years of Berlusconi’s ownership, Milan have always maintained a distinguished culture of winning, even when losing. There is always a sense that Milan will sooner or later right the wrongs and win the Champions League and Serie A. There has never been a protracted collapse, the kind that Inter are inured to. Their cross-city cousins grudgingly accept that fact.
Not that they have a choice. Milan have won the European Cup at least once in each of the last three decades. Inter’s win last year, as noteworthy as it was, came after fourty-five years. Here, I will put it more starkly: after almost half a century.
The last five seasons may have seen Inter at the top of the Italian game, but the momentum has now begun to shift. Milan’s 3-0 win over Inter on Saturday meant that they restored their five-point advantage over their despised rivals with just seven games to go. The victory and the scoreline was even more spectacular given that it was achieved without the leading scorer and assist maker, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, and given that Inter had all the momentum after closing the gap from five to two points in recent weeks.
Milan’s maligned Clarence Seedorf rolled back the years, slotting the ball into spaces that Robinho and Pato could ghost into. The uncompromising operator behind Seedorf was midfielder Mark van Bommel, who at last found the difference between aggressiveness and recklessness. Ignazio Abate, no Cafu yet but making somewhat of a case, sliced through Inter on the flank, bursting into the area at will. His cross to set up Pato’s second goal exposed the sputtering engine of Inter’s defence. Not having Lucio can do that to you, but no one thought this badly.
While Milan striker Pato read the pace and the space of the game brilliantly, Samuel Eto’o and Giampaolo Pazzini rarely got through the Milan defence, and when they did, Christian Abbiati sat waiting, ready to put himself in any danger to avoid conceding. His reaction save on Pazzini definitively changed the momentum of the game. Inter knew then the worst was to come.
Milan coach Massimiliano Allegri has to take a huge portion of the credit. The energy of Kevin-Prince Boateng has been channeled into productivity. The Ghanaian’s freedom of movement and pressing as an unorthodox “1″ in a 4-3-1-2 line-up, which allows him to cut through directly or draw the defenders towards him so that Seedorf and Robinho can do the damage, is a masterstroke by Allegri. The coach may be still too green for the Champions League, but domestically he has seldom put a foot wrong. Even the recent dropped points, charitable impulses that have allowed Inter to clamber into contention, were characterized by lapses in concentration and exhaustion (there are after all players who are creaking, well past thirty now). You can fault Allegri only to a degree for making this title race interesting.
Things are still close. Milan’s sustained assault on Saturday has to be now unflinchingly directed towards the Scudetto. Napoli are three points behind after an exhilarating 4-3 win over Lazio, and Inter know they are not out of it completely, but Milan’s second win over Inter this season has had a searing psychological affect on all their rivals in Serie A. Inter have been nearly indestructible since 2006, but Milan have now beaten them 4-0 on aggregate this season.
The win was also a finger in the eye of the anti-Berlusconi brigade, who wanted to see the coach he sacked last year get his revenge. Had Leonardo won on Saturday, he would have been taking questions about how it feels to embarrass a man whom he likened to Narcissus.
But when the dust settled, it was Berlusconi, all smiles, who was playing the press, praising the spurned Leonardo for his professionalism in choosing Inter as a destination.
He knows he is hated, and he knows he is ridiculed, but it seems Berlusconi always gets to have the last laugh.
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