Celtic vs AC Milan UCL 03/10/2007

Originally posted by tony29

What we're all witnessing is the death of a golden generation.
Every generation has it’s birth, it’s life and it’s death. Nothing strange here, everybody dies but what many (most) of you here are protesting over is “Why weren’t we prepared for the death of this golden 2 times CL winning generation?”
Valid point, I agree. You did have 8 players from season 2002/03 in the starting line up in Athens this May.
But there is a problem here, and this problem is so common for every great generation and every creator of these great generations.
Did you see a successful and immediate transformation from golden generation to another, new, golden generation ? Apart from Sacchi’s to Capello’s Milan transformation, there isn’t a single example in the world where such great generation is immediately replaced with another.
The creator of the generation is aware that after the changes , chances are pretty big that 1,2,3 winningless years will follow until the new generation starts producing great, or similar results of the previous generation. The creator wants to postpone this and he’ll stick to the old generation until the time when they’ll completely fail. And emotional attachment to this successful generation is probably another reason why steps weren’t made to change some things.
I know it’s not logical and history has shown us that it’s not the way to handle things, but just look at all the great generations from the past and you’ll see that the players were kept together even though it was obvious that they are past it. They were replaced only after a huge failure.
Every single time ( except for Sacchi-Capello) the same thing happened. What’s happening to Milan right now has happened to every single great team and always the changes were made way too late.
I’ll only make one example with my team, when after the 3 CL finals and 2 Scudetto winning seasons, in 1998, eventhough it was obvious that Juve’s team can’t go on like this, Moggi didn’t change anything and Juve ended in Intertoto next year. Or in 2003/04 when Moggi thought that the generation that won the scudetto twice in a row and played in 2003 CL final was still good enough eventhough Iuliano, Montero and Ferrara were screaming “replace us, replace us”

So, it’s not only Milan guys… it happened everywhere, all the time

Can't agree more generally.

I think this golden generation is not over yet,if we do the right move.

1. the backbone of our starting lineups is barely over 30,and milanlab is known for it's capability to postpone players diminishing days.
2. kaka is stepping into his prime time,he is going to have many major years left,and he is the soul of a champion team can build on.I also have great hopes on pato and gorky.
3. carlo showed his character in years with milan, I can see Sir fergusson's quality on him.He definitely is not miles away from alltime greatest title in milan history.
4. club's policy is trustworthy on the whole.we don't spend big,and we achieve alot(if not great).the most important is the whole club is functioning pretty well.

What we do need is that it's time we get young core players melting into our current squad.That's the reason why I posted that we don't need R10;if we should have spend that 60million,I'd rather go for pepe and ribery last summer.