AC Milan general spiel 2.0

[San Paolo]

Nice to see El Shaarawy was vital again today and Maxi got his first goal for the club. SES is becoming a real player in these later stages of the season and could be a secret weapon in the CL against Arsenal.

[p_maldini_3]

watched the game on tape delay. i don't know what the f happened in the first half. we played incredibly slow, and ambrosini was at the heart of it. increased the tempo in the second and landed a 1-2 knockout punch.

the pharoah is improving, but defenders are also learning to push him off the ball, he needs to get some meat on those bones without sacrificing his agility. his movement is great. maxi lopez looks good when he's drifting out wide.

hopefully we start getting our injured players back.

ambrosini needs to fuck off.

[Brigate Rossonere]

Lay off Ambrosini. He was very tidy, did his job well. Nothing that van Bommel would have done any better. He is our captain and has stayed loyal to the club for 15 years so show him some respect, especially when he does not even deserve the criticism you are lashing him with.

[San Paolo]

bear in mind PM that Pato started with all these injurys when he "bulked" up. btw Gazzetta for what they're worth rated Ambrosini a 7.5 and was our highest rated player last night. also any thoughts on Maxi? i thought he was just what we needed, ran into the channels well, turned his defender once or twice scored a goal and got an assist not a bad 20+ mins work.

[p_maldini_3]

it is a precarious balance between keeping a 'skinny' frame and trying to add muscle to it. kaka' is the perfect example, he got bigger and lost all his agility. i think it also happened to fat ronaldo, he gained a lot of weight and it messed him up.

i think a lot of the pagelle overrated ambrosini's contribution the match. if they gave him a 7.5, then that means they didn't rate his first half performance one bit. i lost track of the number of times that ambrosini turned over the ball with a stupid pass or just a plain tackle. the worst part about it is that he is the pivot of the midfield. he cannot lose the ball otherwise the other team gets a free run at the defense. and it's udinese. they live on the counterattack.

ambrosini was dead weight in the first half, and he gets a yellow every game because he is too slow to keep up. he has always been an average player on a great team, but there's nothing wrong with that. every great team needs its average players. but he sure as hell didn't deserve that captaincy, he got it by default.

he's a retard on the field, and he puts the team in many dangerous situations on the field of play, the idiot was still running forward AFTER we scored the second goal, and allegri was screaming his ass of to tell him to get back to position. the motherfucker has no sense of positional responsiblity. i refuse to believe that he had a good game yesterday. one of the most overrated players to ever play for milan. and a damn shame that he is our captain.

[RomaShield27]

Wenger vows to attack – Gunners planning to get at Milan in Euro showdown
/ Last Updated: February 12, 2012 9:15pm

Arsene Wenger knows he must strike the right balance between defence and attack in Europe, but says Arsenal will go to AC Milan looking to win. The Gunners are due in Italy on Wednesday for the first leg of their last-16 showdown with Milan.

Taking a positive result from that contest is imperative for Wenger's men, with away goals and clean sheets the order of the day. Arsenal achieved both on their last visit to Giuseppe Meazza, with a 2-0 win secured back in 2008.

Wenger is hoping for more of the same this time out, with the Frenchman vowing to take the game to Milan.

"The European system is organised to reward audacious action away from home," he said. "When you go away in the Champions League, you have to score.

"The best way to score is play in an offensive way and we will try to do that."

One man who could play a key role against the Rossoneri is Mikel Arteta, with the Spaniard expected to dictate proceedings in the middle of the park. He will look to run the show in midfield and provide the ammunition for Arsenal's pacey wingers and deadly marksmen to do the damage.

He told Arsenal Player: "I watch the game from behind [the attackers] and I know that when we become too open we leave many spaces and concede goals. "I just try to balance the team a little bit.

"Sometimes I would like to go forward more, but I've still had chances and the goal [against Blackburn] was my sixth this year, which isn't bad. "I don't want to be the main man; we all know who the main man is and that's Robin [van Persie]. He is the leader, he is the one who makes a real difference.

"Everyone is part of a machine and we are all just trying to make the machine work as well as we can."

[RomaShield27]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/17014627

[p_maldini_3]

i don't have much hope for defeating arsenal, but this video sure as hell gets me fired up:

[RomaShield27]

Arsenal aim to find streetwise edge against Milan in Champions League
San Siro no longer holds the same fear for English sides, but Arsène Wenger's Arsenal team lack the confidence of old

Daniel Taylor in Milan / http://www.guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 14 February 2012 22.21 GMT

By now, Stadio Giuseppe Meazza no longer feels quite like the bearpit of old. Arsenal have won their past two visits to this famous old stadium. Manchester United, Tottenham Hotspur and Liverfekkin'wankscum have all silenced the curva sud and curva nord in the past four years and the Milan coach, Massimiliano Allegri, was facing questions here on Tuesday night about whether they were in danger of developing an inferiority complex against English opponents.

That is not to say San Siro, under the lights, with the Champions League anthem blaring, is no longer one of the great football challenges for a side from the Premiershit, but this is an unusual time for Milan. They are top of Serie A, yet generating only modest acclaim for their performances and widely seen as falling short when it comes to what it takes to win Europe's premier club competition.

Carlo Ancelotti, twice a winner during his eight-year tenure at Milan, has already said he sees it as beyond them. Arrigo Sacchi, another former manager, has been scathing in his criticisms. Sacchi is 65 and, after one defeat at Lazio, talked of having "doubts that some of the players were not my age".

All of which would be fairly encouraging for Arsenal had they not given the impression this season that it would be an ever greater leap of faith to imagine them standing on the podium in Munich on 19 May. Arsène Wenger's side are currently 17 points off Manchester City at the top of the Premiershit. They have conceded more away goals than any other team bar 20th-placed Wigan Athletic and fourth-from-bottom Blackburn Rovers, and it is only a few weeks since the Arsenal crowd subjected Wenger to the most vitriolic abuse of his 15 years at the club. Ancelotti was asked about Arsenal's chances and was polite but dismissive. "I'm not sure they're thinking they can win the Champions League."

Wenger, naturally, disagreed. "If I thought we had no chance I would stay at home. I don't like to waste my time." However, there was an admission that his current team are not as accomplished as the one that played Milan in 2008, when the reigning European champions could not score a goal over two legs against their English opposition.

"We were top of the league and we had a young team that went into that match full of confidence," Wenger reminisced. "Now we are a team building confidence. Football is interesting because you can win everywhere. We have already shown we can win everywhere. I have full confidence in my team to do it."

If so, they may need to rediscover the kind of streetwise edge that has been missing far too often since that last encounter with Milan, arguably Arsenal's last great knockout victory in Europe. The best Champions League teams tend to play with control and concentration and Arsenal displayed all those qualities inside San Siro that evening, winning courtesy of late goals from Cesc Fábregas and Emmanuel Adebayor. Four years on, it is a reflection of the upheaval they have since encountered that only one player from the starting XI, Bacary Sagna, will be in Wenger's lineup this time.

Milan are going through their own period of change and, like Arsenal, it has not always been to the liking of their crowd. A perception has grown that they have sacrificed some of the old panache to play in a more functional manner — epitomised, perhaps, by the presence of the Dutch enforcer Mark van Bommel in midfield. More perspiration, less inspiration. Or as Allegri put it: "You can't always dine on lobster and caviar. Every now and again you have to be satisfied with a ham sandwich."

After being unbeaten at San Siro for 13 months they have lost twice on their own ground in the last few weeks. They are also beset by injury problems, with 13 players missing their victory at Udinese last weekend. It was their first win in four matches and Juventus have closed the gap at the top of Serie A to two points, with a couple of games in hand.

For a club at the top of the league, the mood in Milan seems unexpectedly pessimistic, especially when also taking into account that Arsenal have so many injury concerns of their own that Wenger is considering fielding a deliberately weakened side in the FA Cup fifth-round tie at Sunderland on Saturday.

By then, Thierry Henry will have returned to the New York Red Bulls, the Milan trip ending a loan arrangement that has so far brought him three goals in six appearances. Wenger talked about having tried to extend the loan but being unable to convince the Major League Soccer side to be without their captain any longer when their own season starts in a couple of weeks. Henry has fond memories of San Siro after scoring twice here when Arsenal trounced Internazionale 5-1 in 2003, but it was the 2-0 against Milan five years later that Wenger recalled.

"Are we stronger or not? I will give you the answer after the game." Whatever happens, he will need some remarkable powers of persuasion to convince most observers that the current team, sans Fábregas, William Gallas, Alexander Hleb, Mathieu Flamini, Adebayor and the other heroes of 2008, are a superior bunch.

But having come this far, he could be forgiven for not wanting to believe Ancelotti.

[RomaShield27]

"Italian media report anti-riot police charged at 200 drunk Arsenal fans who threw bottles and tried to chase 4 Milan supporters."

But of course, you'll see reports later on Sky News saying how the Arsewipe fans were all just there to enjoy themselves, when they were attacked for no reason by the police.

Video of them at Piazza Duomo:

http://video.gazzetta.it/i-tifosi-arsen ... cb30228864

[p_maldini_3]

http://www.whoscored.com/Blog/sanfjxo5e ... s-AC-Milan

[San Paolo]

Milan XI: Abbiati; Abate-Mexes-T. Silva-Antonini; Seedorf-Van Bommel-Nocerino; Boateng; Ibrahimovic-Robinho.

[p_maldini_3]

well shit. a bit flabbergasted by the result, but i'll take it.

all i can say is that wenger is an idiot for continuing to play a high line against us the entire game. zlatan raped them all.

[The MAN]

Awesome result and as poor as Arsenal were, we have to credit our team for really stepping it up tonight and approaching the game the right way. Everybody did well and it's been a while since we had a convincing victory vs one of the 'big' sides in Europe.

I don't think we're anywhere near full strength both in terms of personnel and form yet, we should get better and better and while the likes of Barca and Madrid are defintiely ahead of us, we can take on anybody in a 2-legged affair and have a fighting chance so with a bit of luck we might even get past the 1/4 final

[vtec]

yeah, that was completely unexpected, but let's not celebrate yet. i still remember a team called deportivo. great result,and perhaps the most shocking part of it was that robinho scored twice

[soccergurl1989]

That was not completely unexpected cmon We are Milan afterall
the funniest thing is the reaction of Arsenal fans before the match
all of them confident and sure of a win .. see the video's

I virtually died laughing ! after the match they were nowhere to be seen,, maybe cleaning up all those beer cans at piazza duomo lol

[juventino_italiano]

I always thought Milan would win.
I mean Arsenal are shit this year, and shouldnt have even been in the competition to begin with.

But in saying that, i feel i am underpraising Milan because they truly did step it up.
I always thought the would win, but like this? No way.

Well done rossoneri....i guess you can all cue the coefficients talk from me.

[vtec]

"Former Tottenham man Kevin-Prince Boateng scored a sensational volley and Manchester City outcast Robinho bagged a classy brace as Arsenal were thumped 4-0 by AC Milan in the first leg of their Champions League last-16 tie on Wednesday."

to read more:
http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/story ... ca?cc=5739

[RomaShield27]

Milan: Berlusconi presidente in aprile
http://www.corrieredellosport.it/calcio ... +in+aprile

Ritorno al vertice un anno dopo ingresso figlia Barbara nel Cda. / Giovedì 16 Febbraio 2012

(ANSA)-MILANO, 16 FEB- Avverrà fra due mesi il ritorno di Silvio Berlusconi alla presidenza del Milan. A quanto si apprende, si terrà attorno al 20 aprile l'assemblea degli azionisti chiamata ad approvare il bilancio al 31 dicembre 2011 e a ratificare il ritorno al vertice societario di Berlusconi, che ha lasciato la carica di presidente l'8 maggio 2008 diventando presidente del Consiglio. Il ritorno di Berlusconi alla presidenza dovrebbe quindi avvenire ad un anno di distanza dall'ingresso della figlia Barbara nel Cda.

[Lupa]

AC Milan striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic has followed up on the success of his autobiography by launching his life story as an interactive iPad app.

Sara Ohrvall, a spokeswoman for Swedish publisher Albert Bonnier, said Friday that the "I am Zlatan Ibrahimovic" application, based on the paperback autobiography of the same name that has sold more than 500 000 copies, "is the first interactive biography app in the world."

Aside from offering users the e-book reading experience, the 139 kronor ($20.60) app also offers users an added dimension with clips of memorable goals, click-and-show statistics, video interviews and an interactive map.

It also carries an overview of the striker's tattoos.
http://www.supersport.com/football/ital ... y_iPad_app

lol ... are the tattoos part of the interactive feature?