This Milan team is finished...or is it?

I am now a blogger! I encourage you all to read the article, and blogs posted here, as a fellow Milan fan, Caledonian 1976 and I are up against it!

The author, James Richardson, is a Roma fan, (generally a good writer) and is clearly wallowing in their recent victory over us, but has not been able to hang on to any journalistic objectivity what so ever in this article.

Lets give him hell!!

Be polite, dont curse, matter of fact, lets represent our club well, and overwhelm the anti-milan crew (which hover over this blog like flies over faeces) with positive responses to their obvious hatred of a club that is the most dominant in Europe in the modern era of the UCL. (Oh, u will need to register, but that shouldnt be a problem...it wasnt for me )

I for one, dont subscribe to James Richardson´s theory that we are finished...its too early in the season for that...though "this is our worst start of the season for 40 years", at least we are playing good football, even if we can only seem to hit the woodwork.

I am already feeling positive, and re-energised...and coming back to my "internet home"...milanmania, has made me appreciate this site even more..after reading the crap so many think of us...

I also encourage you to post here as well, so we can argue in the "quiet" of our own living room as it were.

FORZA MIIIIIIIIIIIIIIILAN!!!!

James Richardson has been working on UK tv for years covering Italian football. tbh, I've always had respect for him, but tbh since Football Italia started on bravo tv, he's lacked the classy attitude he had before and has become more of a joke.

It's frustrating to watch him constantly try and sway the opinions of the pundits by asking his question over and over again if they don't say something he wants. Personally, I just watch the matches and have stopped watching any other football Italia shows on Bravo (though it looks like they've decided only to show matches now anyway).

But Dev...will u post on the blog?

I tend to stay away from Milan haters and other teams forums, reading their crap only gives me an urge to kill and fills me with hatred... so I stay clear, thanks.

Bravo are going to axe the gazzetta show lol, not enough interest.. its not as good as the old channel4 show.. I actually prefered the Eurosport coverage, at least then we useto get the 2pm start games on there, bravo only show the 7pm game! I see his point, hes taking it from the point of what we are going to win.. There goes my hope of seing James in Milan, having one of those ice creams at the cafe!

I knew from the start that this was going to be a sh*tty season, everyone could see it, thats why we needed a extra boast in the summer transfer department... and we had to have a clear head!

i think teams have shelf lives, our team is reaching the end of it.. I mean the gameplay is predictable, what do you do when your team is predicable? change tactics and players!

Originally Posted by Warro Bantan

But Dev...will u post on the blog?

lol, I may have if I held his opinion high enough

Ok if i just copy what he said


This Milan team is finished
Silvio Berlusconi insists the Rossoneri can pull their season round, but after their third straight home defeat, no one in Italy believes him.
James RichardsonNovember 14, 2006 10:26 AM
To look at him, you wouldn't figure that Silvio Berlusconi was an expert when it comes to keeping your hair on. Still, among the wails of dismay that followed Milan's historic defeat on Saturday against Roma, it was Silvio and Silvio alone who tried to keep things chipper. "You can't win 'em all", he jovially admonished glum hacks as he emerged from Milan's locker-room. "After all, even I lost an election recently! I've told the players to keep believing in themselves, just as we believe in them. We'll be back."

Touching stuff but, not for the first time, some may find it hard to share in the great man's convictions. After all, in Saturday's game Roma had patently banged another nail into the wide-bodied coffin of the Carlo Ancelotti era, with Milan's proudly battling former champions left punchdrunk by the younger, faster visitors.

The 2-1 defeat came courtesy of a magnificent Francesco Totti brace, either side of an equaliser from Cristian Brocchi, and was Milan's third home loss in a row; the first time that this giant club has posted such a record in 40 years. Admittedly, all three defeats have come against the leading teams in Italy but, coupled with their recent 2-0 loss at newly promoted Atalanta, they leave little further room for debate. Twenty points from first place, nine from the Champions League positions: domestically, this Milan team is finished.

There remains the question of whether Uncle Silvio can fashion another, better side from what little is on offer come January's transfer window, but don't get your hopes up. While Berlusconi has made a series of desperate-sounding hints about Ronaldinho and the much-missed Andriy Shevchenko ("he told me just yesterday he'd love to come back" offered a shamelessly straight-faced Silvio on Saturday), he's also admitted that the club have struggled to balance their books. Thus more low-key moves for Lazio right-back Massimo Oddo and Udinese frontman Vincenzo Iaquinta might be a possibility.

In the meantime the top teams are getting further away, and Roma with them. While Inter and Palermo won their games the next day to stay four points clear, it was Roma's San Siro exploits that stole all the attention - not surprisingly, given that this was the first time in almost 20 years that they'd won this fixture. Roma are now being hailed as title favourites by many of the same sections of the press that declared them 'in crisis' a few weeks back when they drew with Chievo and Ascoli.

Two things have happened at Roma since those dark days: the wild-eyed Brazilian wingman Amantino Mancini has returned, and so has the real Francesco Totti. The difference these two made on Saturday was evident. While Mancini restored the side's rather un-Italian width, Totti took care of the history-making up front.

The scoring began just seven minutes in. Alessandro Nesta, who these days is showing all the touch in defence of a young Donald Rumsfeld, hoisted an incoming ball blindly back over his shoulder into the Milan area and, while Nesta's team-mates froze in confusion, Rodrigo Taddei chipped the loose ball towards Totti, who spun and volleyed into the top corner.

One-nil up, Roma now looked in a state of grace, with their midfielders buzzing and twinkling past their hapless opponents in a dazzling display of one-touch football. But, as the game wore on, Milan's confidence grew. Their own midfield stars began to essay a few shots from range and, after both Clarence Seedorf and Ricardo Oliveira had struck the woodwork, Brocchi then found the equaliser 11 minutes into the second half with a blast from outside the area.

Roma in turn began to rain shots in on the Milan goal and, seven minutes from time, the pressure paid off in style. First the substitute Alberto Aquilani pulled off a rabona - crossing his right leg behind his left to strike the ball - to surprise Milan's rearguard with an inch-perfect pass wide to Mancini, and his cross back in was thumped past Dida by the head of the flying Totti.

Afterwards - having sucked his thumb in celebration - Roma's captain chose to quietly downplay the significance of the win. "You bet I believe in the title! We can beat anyone!" he oh-go-on-thened. His enthusiasm is understandable; when Roma play as they did on Saturday it is hard to pick any team above them.

They also have arguably the best blend of players of any of the leading sides. Against Inter's been-there-done-that ennui and the relative inexperience of Palermo's provincial pool, Roma blend born-and-bred local boys - Totti, Daniele De Rossi, Aquilani and Aleandro Rosi - with foreigners who've yet to have their hunger dented by actually winning anything.

On Saturday it worked a treat, as it had in the previous week's 3-1 thumping of Fiorentina. Still, you can't help remembering that, when the Champions League rolls around, Roma often stop their world-beating and start drawing with the likes of Ascoli. This could hand their rivals a sizeable advantage for, unlike the giallorossi, Inter have the depth to cope with the continent's demands, and Palermo only have the Uefa Cup to worry about.

Since Palermo host Inter in under two weeks, let's save any further conjecture on their chances until then. In the meantime, with Ascoli's Attilio Tesser becoming Serie A's third coaching casualty of the season after seven defeats in 11 games (an improvement on last season, when he lasted just one game at Cagliari) - and with Udinese's Giovanni Galeone set to be the next to go for conceding five goals at Lazio - week 12 brings a curious mix of matches, the probable highlight of which is Roma's Sunday afternoon clash with Catania

Catania, you say? The Sicilian side that's returned to Serie A after 24 years of debt and disaster, that likes to play with at least four up front and that, despite the second-worst defensive record in Italy, is currently out of the Champions League places only on goal difference? That Catania? Curiously enough, yes.

Southern Italy's least-conventional side should provide an interesting test of Roma's title mettle this Sunday, in a game I'll have the increasingly rare pleasure on hosting live on Bravo. If you see only one more live game this year, it's probably this one, but otherwise you can catch the usual round up back here in a week. See you then.

You wouldnt guess James is a Roma fan would you?

Originally Posted by ACMILAN1983

lol, I may have if I held his opinion high enough

Its obvious his opinion is rubbish...its those other bloggers that are sycophantically (is that even a word) thriving on his derision of Milan thats getting to me..its like he is GOD, and they are Moses, getting the 10 commandments in the desert.

Good grief!

I would love to see an overwhelming response to their crap...by positive minded Milanistas, to help me and Caledonian fight to keep them from completely drowning out our support of Milan.

Originally Posted by Warro Bantan

Its obvious his opinion is rubbish...its those other bloggers that are sycophantically (is that even a word) thriving on his derision of Milan thats getting to me..its like he is GOD, and they are Moses, getting the 10 commandments in the desert.

Good grief!

I would love to see an overwhelming response to their crap...by positive minded Milanistas, to help me and Caledonian fight to keep them from completely drowning out our support of Milan.

I can help u if u want

But Warro, i don't see there smthg that is so provokative.
I mean, go to Roma, Juve, Inter or any other Italian club's forum, you'll see even bigger sh!t about Milan.

If you fall on these provokations, you'll become a Tony 29 who couldn't handle reading the provokations on MM about Juve and he decided to become a member and defend his club .................. i advice u not to do that !!


P.S: Why do some people call your club Meelan ?
I understand Bilan or JuBe....but what the hell is Meelan ?????????????

Thanks Tony...but I guess u misunderstand my angst:

This is a blog..a generic, non-partisan page where people from all walks of life, some who barely watch the Serie A, to some diehard fans like myself, Caledonian, and Iterista....guess who he supports?

I quite agree that worse would be posted about Milan at a Juve, Inter, Roma fan site..but this is quite different..and (though you may not appreciate this) could represent a source of new fans for Milan, or (which would be better for you) Italian football on a whole.

I just need "back-up"...reading post after post where all people do is agree that you club is finished is not for me, a pleasing experience...and I hope that we here, can help to reinstate some amount of balance, by disputing James Richardson, and his gang of groupie bloggers, that its not all doom and gloom for Milan, and that we certainly are NOT finished.

Thanks to all for your support in this.

Meelan is the english way of trying to pronounce Milan the way Italians do...or like I write MIIIIIILAN...as opposed to a very short, "i", as in "Milan"...see how tonto they are?

Originally Posted by Warro Bantan

Meelan is the english way of trying to pronounce Milan the way Italians do...or like I write MIIIIIILAN...as opposed to a very short, "i", as in "Milan"...see how tonto they are?

Ahhhhh, Yes
I never noticed that the English read the letter "i" totally different than i or the Italians do.
Milan for them is the same as Mailan is for me or the Italians....hehe, how could i forget about this

This Milan team is finished? Well, let them (whoever they are) think so. Almost ten years ago, Milan was in a slump. People say Milan is going down. They won in 1999 and European Cup in 2003. Between then, made good purchases and played relatively well.

The only difference between the 'slump' of Milan of 1996-97 and Milan of today is that Milan of today plays better football than Milan of almost 10 years ago. Most of you don't agree, probably, but after watching the Milan games lately, I can't say Milan played THAT bad. The only bad thing is the results are not coming their way. Not yet.

This Milan team is finished? Well, only if you say so...*tongue-in-cheek*

Here is an article about MIlan too that can be share with u guys.I havent read yet..from www.soccernet.com

Rossoneri in crisis? by Roberto Gotta

One of the unwritten laws of football journalism states that a team that loses two matches in a row, or 90% of its matches over a short period of time, is in a 'crisis'.


As a general rule sportswriters love a club in 'crisis'. Why? Because, unfortunate and mawkish though it may be, the worse a situation gets the more interesting it becomes as one is presented with intrigue, scandal, controversy and the occasional chance to stick some metaphorical pins on a foe.

This does not necessarily lead to negative reporting; there is a crisp difference between negative reporting and reporting on negative situations.

In the first case, you tend to concentrate on the worse side of everything and you pretend there's nothing else.

Which, getting back to football, means there's the risk Milan's 'crisis' after their fourth defeat in the last five Serie A matches (see, almost the empirical 90% I mentioned) might overshadow one of the most amazing pieces of skill I have seen in years of watching this beautiful game. It happened seven minutes from the end of Milan's 1-2 home defeat to Roma last Saturday.

After Kaka under-hit a square pass to Clarence Seedorf which the Dutchman failed to control, the ball fell to Alberto Aquilani, the young Roma midfielder who earned his first national team call-up a few hours later.

Seeing how Mancini had made a great run on the left side and that the moment had to be seized before Alessandro Nesta closed him down, Aquilani quickly delivered the ball with an astonishing 'rabona', a name which apparently derived from tango: with his back to the goal and the ball rolling towards his lesser-favoured left foot, Aquilani simply hit it with his right by crossing it behind his left leg.

Many footballers do this kind of stuff in practice, very few try it during a match and even fewer avoid making fools of themselves in the process.

Aquilani not only struck the ball perfectly with the toe-cum-inside of his right foot, but laser-guided it in the exact place, fifteen yards away, for Mancini to let it bounce a couple of times then send in a sweet cross with the inside of his left foot which Francesco Totti met with a diving header.

A beauty of a goal which I could watch over and over, it embodies the essence of the exquisite skills some of the top players possess, and which make watching this game still worthwhile despite all the dodgy stuff going on in some boardrooms and behind the scenes.

Speaking of which (see the afore mentioned negative situation) Roma's first win away to Milan in 20 years meant the home side are not only out of the Scudetto race for good, but mired in one of their worst stretches in recent years. The unofficial status of 'crisis' for the rossoneri had been declared last week after their 2-0 defeat at Atalanta.

You may have stumbled upon a few pieces criticising Carlo Ancelotti's squad, but the depth of the side's problems was hidden last week by the controversy that the Milan camp raised about the bad refereeing decisions that had gone against them in recent weeks, which came on top of the refusal by the Italian Olympic Committee's 'Arbitration' office to take some points off the 8-point deduction Milan had been burdened with for their role in the Calciopoli scandal.

The extent and pettiness of the protestations left a very bitter taste, coming as they were from one of the most powerful clubs in the world.

With even some of the Milan players rejecting the furore surrounding refereeing decisions thankfully the debate subsided allowing the analytic eye to shift back towards the real problems besetting the side. Milan started the season with three wins in a row but have won only once in Serie A since September 20; in the meantime, they have scored six goals and conceded eleven.

Their top-scorer, with two goals, is left-back Marek Jankulovski, while Alberto Gilardino, Pippo Inzaghi and Ricardo Oliveira have one each. The forwards have been getting intermittent service from midfield, owing in part to Andrea Pirlo's loss of form following a great World Cup, and any semblance of wide play - never Milan's forte in the first place - dissolved when Serginho was sidelined by injury and Cafu started feeling his age.

Ancelotti rarely veers away from his favoured 4-3-1-2 as the starting formation but this has often meant Gilardino and Inzaghi, when paired together, have stepped on each other's shoes and made the same runs towards the same spots. Gilardino, as he did for Parma, plays better as a lone striker, but this is not what Ancelotti has in mind, although he did use him alone up front in a 4-2-3-1 against Roma.

Milan have been desperately missing Andriy Shevchenko, whose outstanding movement across the front line tied up defenders, moved them out of position and created space for team-mates, and this has led to an endless stream of innuendo, rumour and speculation about the Ukrainian's return to Milan, but this is yet another example of the chaotic thinking that often dominates Italian football.

For Milan's illnesses need a more radical remedy than bringing back a player who has already given the rossoneri seven years' great service and would not represent an investment for the future but rather a stop-gap solution.

This does not even take into consideration the fact Shevchenko is entitled to live his life away from Milan, although reading some of the stuff that has been written about him here, with a badly concealed glee at his failure to set Stamford Bride alight, you'd believe he weren't. That Milan's problems are spread so evenly across the squad is another reason why Shevchenko should be left alone in London.

The strikers may have been firing blanks, but as I said the midfielders are not helping them, and the wonderful Kaka, who ran rings around Anderlecht in the Champions League, cannot be expected to do it all alone, not when all around him are either slowed by injury or suffering from a post-World Cup letdown.

Milan's slow-down tactics, with passing which tends to send opponents to sleep while advancing yard-by-yard and waiting for an opening only makes sense if a consistent goal-scoring production is guaranteed, otherwise it can become a fruitless exercise in milking the clock.

It is therefore supremely important that the midfield is running at full-strength, which has not been the case this season, even before Rino Gattuso, who is acquiring an iconic status for his Vodafone commercials alongside Totti, went down with a knee injury at Atalanta last week.

On top of this, the defence has been suffering for a while. Puzzlingly for the fans and insiders who were clearly aware of the inevitable decline of the 38-year-old Paolo Maldini and the injury problems that have often hampered Nesta, Milan did not seem in a rush to strengthen the unit that had grown old (Cafu is 36, Giuseppe Favalli is 34, Ale Costacurta is 40) and had lost a very valuable member in Jaap Stam.

Milan have conceded 12 goals in 11 matches, but it hasn't always been the defence at fault. In fact the problems in midfield have impacted its ability to shield the back four and have left them exposed to counter-attacks and too many one-on-one situations: witness the Aquilani-Mancini-Totti combination, Ibrahimovic's run for Inter's third in the October 28 derby and one of Palermo's goals - not surprisingly all of them at the San Siro, where Milan are more likely to take the game to their opponents. However, this does not mean Milan's season is headed for complete disaster.

They squeezed the life out of Roma for long stretches in the second half before Aquilani's memorable flick sprang Mancini and Toti loose, and they could summon enough energies and strength to mount a credible attack on the Champions League, but it is clear they should - and are, whatever the smokescreen owner Silvio Berlusconi and his cohorts are spreading - think about overhauling the side and start afresh.

At the moment, Milan have only a handful of players at the top of their game and with a solid chance of improving themselves and the side. Milan's useful squad members are Kaka, Pirlo, Nesta and Gattuso if healthy, the young Frenchman Joann Gourcuff, Gilardino (yes); with Daniele Bonera, Kakha Kaladze, Seedorf, Brocchi, Ambrosini, Jankulovski.

This means they should add at least three world class players to keep up with the likes of Inter domestically and Barcelona in Europe.

All the rumours about Ronaldinho - his agent is Oliveira's brother and this has led to speculation on the real reasons Milan signed the Brazilian striker this past summer - may have Milan fans excited at the thought of him conjuring up his magic at the San Siro, but ironically the rossoneri would be better off signing a couple of central defenders and an attacking fullback on either flank than bringing in the Brazilian.

It is already well known they are following the progress of Udinese's Felipe and Zapata, who fit the description of the young, alert, athletic central defenders the club needs, but Berlusconi has repeatedly warned he's not going to break the bank, so fans should not expect headline signings.

Then he goes out and says Shevchenko told him he'd like to come back, but hey, he made his fortune in the entertainment business and knows that the timing of some sentences is sometimes better than their actual content.