May 18 – Capello’s Milan Destroy Barca

ON this day last year we brought you the story of the 1960 European Cup Final. The Real Madrid team of Ferenc Puskas and Alfredo Di Stefano destroyed a hapless Eintracht Frankfurt side 7-3 in Glasgow in a show of such brilliance and domination that it is remembered as the best ever final in the history of the big-eared trophy.

The final played today in 1994 is perhaps the only one to rival the great Madrid performance, and is certainly the best final played in modern times when, with so much at stake, the final can often be terribly boring as neither side wants to make the crucial mistake.

None of that today when Johan Cruyff’s Barcelona ‘dream team’ were favourites against Fabio Capello’s AC Milan. Barca had marched to the final with an aplomb and were confident of a winning the cup for the second time in three years.

By contrast, Milan were not in great shape coming into the game. In the 3-0 win over Monaco in the semi-final at the San Siro, key defenders Franco Baresi and Alessandro Costacurta both received yellow cards that ruled them out of the final. Worse still, Capello was forced to leave out Florin Raducioiu, Jean-Pierre Papin and Brian Laudrup as well because of the Uefa rules about fielding a maximum of three non-nationals.

One of the non-nationals Capello did pick was Marcel Desailly, the Frenchman who, the previous season, had been in the Marseille team that had beaten Milan in the final.

Despite all the changes Capello had been forced into, his side quickly began to take a hold on the game, denying highly-fancied Barca the chance to impose themselves on it.

After 22 minutes Milan made their pressure pay when Dejan Savicevic ran down the right flank and passed to Daniele Massaro who tapped the ball into an empty net. 1-0. It was 2-0 just before half time when Massaro bagged his second of the night after being set up by Roberto Donadoni from the left wing.

Barca went in 2-0 down at the break and hoping to re-group. But any hopes of a famous come-back were surely snuffed out just two minutes after the re-start when Dejan Savicevic capitalised on a defensive error by Miguel Angel Nadal to lob goalkeeper Andoni Zubizarreta for the third goal.

Eight minutes later and Desailly, who Capello, in a tactical masterstroke, had played in front of the back-four, made it 4-0 when he beat the offside trap to score.

It was a crushing victory and Capello’s finest hour as coach and Desailly became the first man to win the European Cup in successive seasons with two different clubs.

Watch the whole darn shooting match above, and come back tomorrow when we’ll have more tales of the unexpected (by which we mean ‘about football’). TTFN.