This Day in Sport - Milan Put on a Masterclass
On this day in 1994, AC Milan destroyed the dream imagined by Barcelona and Cruyff
18 May 1994 was supposed to be the night that the Dream Team became immortal. Instead, it was the night the dream died. Johan Cruyff promised that his Barcelona side would end Milan's supremacy; Milan ended theirs with a thumping 4-0 win in the UEFA Champions League final.
Barcelona oozed star-power. Andoni Zubizaretta, Pep Guardiola, Ronald Koeman, Hristo Stoichkov, Romario with Cruyff at the helm. The Catalan side were favourites to win their second European Cup in three years, having just won La Liga for the fourth year in a row.
Milan's preparation before the final, meanwhile, was in disarray: legendary striker Marco van Basten was still out with a long-term injury, and £13 million young sensation Gianluigi Lentini, at the time the world’s most expensive footballer, was also injured; captain Franco Baresi was suspended, as was defender Alessandro Costacurta; and UEFA regulations back then limited teams to fielding a maximum of three non-nationals meant that coach Fabio Capello was forced to leave out the likes of Jean-Pierre Papin and Brian Laudrup.
Ironically, Brian’s brother, Michael Laudrup, was also left out of Barcelona’s squad. It was a decision that Capello branded as a “mistake” on Cruyff’s part as Laudrup, according to the Milan boss, was the one player the Italian side “feared”. It was one of many mistakes by Cruyff on this night.
When Barcelona won the cup in 1992, he gave the players to freedom to go and “enjoy yourselves”. In 1994 against Milan he instructed his players to “go out and win. You’re better than them”. In two short years, he had gone from genius of a man-manager to chump.
Milan scored twice in the first half, Daniele Massaro getting both. Two minutes into the second half Dejan Savicevic scored a glorious lob. Marcel Desailly then put the icing on a glorious Milan cake in Athens.
The same Desailly who Cruyff openly mocked when talking of his own players in comparison. Before the game, Cruyff noted that while he had signed Romario, the Brazilian who had scored 30 in 33 games, Milan had spent the same on Desailly.
"That," he said, "is telling." His words, would ultimately, come back to bite him in the hardest way imaginable. Desailly ran the midfield, bullying Guardiola, and company, in the process.
It was Milan's fifth European Cup; Barcelona had one.
