AC Milan general spiel 2.0

[San Paolo]

hohohohoho, Bagg......tit.

[Bagg10]

[RomaShield27]

lol, funny pics. And the irony of it coming from a Rubentus fan...

[p_maldini_3]

there's some shit going down in milan tonight.

first some journalist said that berlusconi called him and said there will be an entire internal restructuring of the technical department (coaches) at milan, aka allegri is gone.

the club released a statement that the report was untrue.

then the journalist, who is well-reputed (apparently), says that everything he reported is true and was said by berlusconi. of the denial from the club, he said it must be some internal problems.

i was initially happy with the statement, it confirms that allegri will go. there might've also been an implication against the big managers of the club, ie galliani and braida. now that would be a big deal.

it's one man's word against another, but there's some shit going on and it might signal a big change for how the club is run.

[p_maldini_3]

http://www.goal.com/en/news/11/transfer ... ri?ICID=HP

[San Paolo]

Allegri and Galliani were supposed to be attending some function last night together to do with the history of the Champions league but after all this came out they were a no show.

[RomaShield27]

They were probably too cheap to bribe the officials to let them in.

[RomaShield27]

In the penultimate entry of our series, we look at Arrigo Sacchi's great Milan team that won the European Cup two years in a row

Posted by Paolo Bandini / Friday 24 May 2013 09.00 BST / http://www.guardian.co.uk

Arrigo Sacchi's first European Cup triumph was almost lost to the world. The 1989 final between his Milan team and Steaua Bucharest, played in Barcelona at the Camp Nou, was supposed to have been filmed by the Spanish state broadcasters TVE, whose live images would then be shared with international rights holders all across the globe. That plan had to be revised rather swiftly when TVE's technicians called a strike to coincide with the game.

Engaged in a long-running contractual dispute, the staff in question had reached the end of their collective tether. Last-ditch negotiations with management were convened, but all to no avail. On the afternoon of 23 May, little more than 24 hours before the final was due to kick-off, TVE released a statement confirming that they would be unable to show it.

As a concession to football fans overseas, however, TVE's technicians agreed not to impede any foreign TV crews who sought to take over the international broadcast – as long as it was not aired in Spain. That was all the Italian government needed to know. The ministry of defence immediately placed a military plane at the disposal of their own state broadcasters, Rai, to assist them in transporting Italian film crews over to Barcelona.

A day later 300 million people, spread across 80 different countries, tuned in to watch one of the most lopsided finals in tournament history. No sooner had the referee, Karl-Heinz Tritschler, whistled for the game to begin, than Milan set up camp on the edge of the Steaua box. When Ruud Gullit opened the scoring by passing into an empty net after 18 minutes, the only surprise was that it had taken him that long to do so.

Gullit struck again before half-time, teeing himself up for a half-volley from 18 yards out. Marco Van Basten had already made it 2-0 by that point with a powerful close-range header, and would score his team's fourth just after the break, running on to a through ball and guiding it home from the corner of the six-yard box. The game finished 4-0 to the Rossoneri.

It would be easy to fool oneself, looking back, that a Milan victory had always been a foregone conclusion. In truth it was nothing of the sort. Steaua had reached the semi-finals of this tournament a year previously and won it as recently as 1986. Closing in on their fifth consecutive Romanian title, they had not lost a domestic league game for more than three years.

Even Milan's owner, Silvio Berlusconi, stressed in the days leading up to the final that he did not expect his team to prevail, stating that they were ahead of schedule and could be content simply to have reached this stage. His manager, meanwhile, had never considered winning to be his top priority in the first place.

Sacchi wanted to beat Steaua, of course, but more than that he was intent on defeating a powerful national stereotype. Italian football had become renowned over the course of several decades for its grim defensive mindset, reflected and perhaps even perpetuated in the writings of the immensely influential sports writer Gianni Brera: a man who famously argued that a perfect match should always finish 0-0.

It has been claimed that Brera invented catenaccio, since it was he who first came up with the word "libero" to describe the additional defender, free of specific responsibilities, that he believed all teams should deploy in support of their existing man-marking schemes. He justified his tactical outlook with spurious appeals to genetic science, claiming that Italians were inherently smaller and weaker than people from other European nations and could therefore only hope to succeed through defensive guile and cunning.

A chicken-and-egg debate exists over whether Brera was really influencing coaches in this period, or merely applying a new language to tactical trends that already existed. But what is clear is that caution really had taken hold in the peninsula. As James Horncastle noted in a piece on Brera for The Blizzard, the average Serie A game contained just 1.92 goals when Sacchi took charge of Milan in 1987.

Sacchi was intent on showing his countrymen another way. A former shoe salesman who had never played football professionally, his ideas on how the game should be played were formed during trips to peddle footwear in different countries across Europe. Whenever his schedule would permit, the young Sacchi would make arrangements to see the local teams play. He became obsessed with the Total Football ideals of Ajax and Holland in the mid-1970s.

It was a desire to spread such concepts which pushed Sacchi into giving up sales and pursuing a career in football management. When he took over at Rimini in Serie C1 (then the third tier of Italian football) in 1982, the mere concept of zonal marking was considered radical and dangerous. Five years later that same defensive system helped him to win the Scudetto with Milan in his first season of top-flight management.

Sacchi challenged his teams to always set the tempo and take the game to their opponents, rather than playing reactively. When they had the ball, his players should always be looking to bring it forward, using short, quick passes to drag defenders out of position. When Sacchi's team lost possession, the whole team was expected to press high up the pitch, denying the opposition time to think and regroup. Those concepts might sound commonplace today, but in the context of Italian football in the late 1980s, they were positively revolutionary.

Even after Milan's 1987 title win many Italians remained sceptical of Sacchi's methods. Before the final against Steaua, he brought an article by Brera with him into the changing rooms, telling his players: "The most famous Italian journalist says that the Romanians are masters on the ball, and that we need to wait for them to come at us before we try to strike them on the counter-attack. What do you guys reckon?" According to Sacchi's account, Gullit stood up and replied: "We will attack them from the first second".

That they most certainly did. In the next morning's edition of the newspaper La Repubblica, Brera likened Milan to "that monster from the classic poems which is coaxed out of the abyss by a friendly goddess in order to smash a hated enemy". Continuing in his own inimitable style, Brera described Gullit as being "so full of uranium that he was able to recharge Milan's atomic cell as if by magic".

And yet that was not even the most impressive victory of the season for Milan, whose 5-0 obliteration of Real Madrid in the semi-final second leg remains one of the most iconic games in club history. Madrid were themselves en route to the fourth of five consecutive La Liga titles, and had gone 27 league games without defeat in the run-up to their humiliation at San Siro.

Milan's triumph over Madrid seemed all the more impressive for the fact that the goals had been spread between five different players – Carlo Ancelotti, Frank Rijkaard and Roberto Donadoni joining Gullit and Van Basten on the scoresheet. The team, rather than any individual player, had been the true star of the show. That is how Sacchi would always have wanted it.

For a long time, indeed, Sacchi would contend that any player, given the right training, could slot into his system and perform just as well as the next man. In reality, of course, that was simply not the case, a fact which became increasingly apparent as Milan's league form stuttered amidst an injury crisis during the 1989-90 season.

Indeed, Sacchi ought not to be considered the sole architect of Milan's success in this period. While the manager's obsession with teamwork – driven home by lengthy training sessions without a ball, in which players had only their team-mates' positions to use as their point of reference – was unquestionably crucial, the team also had their owner to thank for seeing the other side of the coin.

As the head of a considerable media empire, Berlusconi understood the importance of star power better than most, and it was he who funded the moves for Gullit, Van Basten and Rijkaard. His club was simultaneously fortunate to have such great home-grown players as Paolo Maldini and Franco Baresi on its books. Sacchi recognised the value of his cast, but even then maintained that they would be nothing without their director. "De Niro is a fine actor," he would say. "But you only see it when he appears in a great Coppola film."

It was Sacchi's refusal to kowtow to his stars that ultimately proved his downfall at Milan, Silvio Berlusconi cutting the manager loose in 1991 amid reports of a falling out with Van Basten and various others. By that point, though, Sacchi and his squad had already secured their place in history, becoming the first team in more than a decade to retain the European Cup when they beat Benfica in the 1990 final. Nobody has repeated that achievement since.

Milan's performance was not as impressive against the Portuguese champions as it had been against Steaua a year previously, but the world still tuned in to see Frank Rijkaard score the only goal in a 1-0 win. This time, even the Spanish were watching.

[Bagg10]

http://marciaita.altervista.org/WordPre ... neroverde/

[p_maldini_3]

i call bullshit.

[San Paolo]

[San Paolo]

Sokratis signs for Dortmund from Werder. unbelievable.

[red]

Odd move for Dormund.

He never impressed me in Italy and has still looked poor when I've seen him in Germany.

[p_maldini_3]

yeah it makes no sense.

[p_maldini_3]

http://espnfc.com/blog/_/name/tacticsan ... 54?cc=5901

in that article, sokratis is on the subs bench for the 'team of the season'.

something might've clicked?

[RomaShield27]

Dear Max...
http://www.football-italia.net/34885/dear-max? / Sunday June 2 2013

Tonight Massimiliano Allegri will learn his Milan fate, but Susy Campanale sends him one final warning.

Dear Max,

We’ve had fun together, winning the Scudetto in the first year, challenging to the end in the second and completing an incredible comeback to clinch a Champions League play-off spot despite half the squad departing simultaneously. Alright, so your European results were poor, but with this group of players at your disposal it’s not as if you could’ve done much better. I like you. This is why I’m giving you some advice: Run away.

Seriously, you have this perfect opportunity to get out of this madhouse and accept a job to rebuild Roma. Admittedly, that’s a bit of a crazytown too, but at least their owners have a little more patience and are offering a long-term contract. You’ll have talented players at your disposal, a beautiful city and a group of fans so utterly frustrated by recent failure that simply qualifying for the Europa League will be impressive. You will be given more freedom to make your own decisions without an overbearing President leaning over your shoulder at all times ready to take the credit for victory or publicly blame you for a defeat.

This evening you go to Arcore to meet face to face with President Silvio Berlusconi. After weeks of desperate mediating, Adriano Galliani has managed to smooth things over to the point where Don Silvio will deign to sit at the same table as you. He publicly humiliated you so many times, pulling out of meetings, claiming he dictated the change of tactics and giving scathing interviews. Do you really think that’s over and done with? Of course not.

Trust me, I’ve been a Milanista for almost 30 years and I know what Berlusconi is like. At the first hiccup, he will sack you. He’ll be on your case 24/7 just waiting for the moment he can swing the axe and paint himself as the great saviour again. Berlusca doesn’t like competition, as he wants to be the centre of attention and gratitude at all times. Galliani is the only one in the club hierarchy standing up for you and he also seems to be dropping down the food chain due to a power struggle with Barbara Berlusconi, so that’s another safety net disappearing. Remember that letter read out on Il Processo del Lunedi? I sincerely doubt the official story it was a fake. That sneering tone sounded exactly like Berlusconi to me.

Why does Berlusconi want Clarence Seedorf to take over as Coach when he’s patently unqualified? Because he wants the credit, of course! The President only hires a tactician to do the daily grind work and take the blame when something goes wrong, because he is so egotistical that he has to boast he ‘created’ the winning Milan manager. This is a man who actually said the Rossoneri should build a statue of him to place outside San Siro, or rename the stadium in his name.

When you sit down to dinner tonight, look Berlusconi in the face-lifted eyes and tell him you’re done with this. It might not be the best course of action for Milan, but it will be the best thing for you. Good luck.

[San Paolo]

Max Allegri looks like he's got a new deal.

[p_maldini_3]

goddamnit.

i hope that this is just another year until prandelli finishes with la nazionale.

but looking at the positives, he did get the most out of balotelli. may it continue. forza milan

[p_maldini_3]

Official: Allegri stays with Milan
By Football Italia staff

Milan have put their faith in Massimiliano Allegri after crisis talks with President Silvio Berlusconi.

“With Galliani and Allegri we had a frank and cordial discussion in which we revisited and analysed the past season, so there was a clarification on certain things,” said Berlusconi.

“We reached an agreement on the rights and duties of the club towards the Coach and the Coach towards the club.

“We also talked about the type of football that Milan must play and the squad for next season, setting out guidelines for the transfer session.

“The rapport with the Coach, which has never been interrupted, continues with faith and in absolute reciprocal respect.”

The tactician had been in doubt after scraping third place on the final day of the Serie A season and had received a proposal to take over at Roma.

Berlusconi had repeatedly postponed the crunch talks over the last two weeks, but he finally sat down with Allegri and Vice-President Adriano Galliani at his Arcore villa this evening at 19.45 UK time.

The presence of director of communications Giuseppe Sapienza and official club photographer Gianni Buzzi immediately pointed to positive news for the Coach.

Allegri’s confirmation was revealed with a live broadcast on Milan Channel at 23.00 UK time.

There were rumours he had also signed a contract extension to 2015, but that does not seem to be the case.

He has been at the club for three seasons, securing the Scudetto, second place and this year’s third-place finish.

There are also reports that Allegri asked for reinforcements at the meeting, specifically a centre-back, two midfielders and an attacking winger.

[p_maldini_3]

one of the greatest days in the history of milan:

Official: Ambrosini leaves Milan
By Football Italia staff

Milan have officially announced that Massimo Ambrosini will leave this summer, making Riccardo Montolivo the new captain.

“Our path and that of Ambrosini are separating, as he will not renew his contract with Milan,” announced Adriano Galliani.

He had been the captain, but there is a very surprising choice to take over the armband.

“If Christian Abbiati agrees, then the next captain of Milan will be Montolivo.”

This is an unusual decision, as Montolivo only arrived on a free transfer from Fiorentina a year ago.

Ambrosini has been linked with a move abroad to West Ham United, Canada or the United States.

The 36-year-old has been with the Rossoneri for 18 years, first joining in July 1995 from Cesena.

There was a one-year loan spell at Vicenza in 1997-98, but that was his only foray outside San Siro.
===========

thanks for your service you geezer. good luck.