AC Milan To Face Man Utd

Do you know how to silence to a very noisy passionate home crowd? Answer: score two away goals in four minutes, and if they are fairly early on, well so much the better! That’s certainly one good way! And guess what? That’s exactly what AC Milan did last night to throw my prediction of the potential semi-finals and final line-ups totally out of the window!!

I think I only got one out of four right, Liverpool. Hmm, 25% isn’t good! Oh well, never mind. I suppose I won’t be giving up the day job to become a bookie then!

Anyway, as I said, it was AC Milan who scored the goals last night, not Bayern as I thought, and to be honest it really does set up a mouth watering semi-final with Man Utd. It’s really starting to get interesting now! Sir Alex Ferguson obviously thinks so too, as he was seated in the stands wataching the drama unfold. And to be honest, whenever the camera went to him, he didn’t look too happy.

I suspect he was, deep down like me, thinking or probably hoping Bayern would prevail and early on it looked as though they would. However, he will certainly return to Manchester this morning with a lot to think about for the semi! AC Milan are an extremely experienced and an excellent side and even though I admit my predictions haven’t been great up until now, I will definitely say this: AC Milan will not concede 7 goals at Old Trafford like Roma!

Anyway, it was Clarence Seedorf (who if memory serves me right, is the only player to win the trophy with three different clubs) shot past Oliver Kahn after 17 minutes before his sublime touch released Filippo Inzaghi to double Milan’s lead from 18 yards. That kind of shut the noisy Bavarians up a little! And to be honest Milan might have scored more had Oliver Kahn not made some good saves particularly one low down from the Brazilian Kaka.

To say it was a bit a frustrating evening for Bayern would be a huge understatement having left the San Siro last week in excellent shape after a scoring what I thought were two vital away goals in a 2-2 draw.

However it was Milan who roused themselves when it mattered and defended with relative comfort after their double salvo changed the complexion of the tie. It could of course have been very different had Bayern taken one of their early chances but Massimo Oddo cleared off the line after Christian Lell hooked a Van Bommel cross goalwards, while Podolsky’s angled strike forced an excellent save from Dida.

The German’s coach, Ottmar Hitzfeld, who rejoined Bayern in January, said, “It’s a very big disappointment.

“We got a 2-2 draw in Milan and we had great hope that we would advance. But we always knew that Milan can win away from home.

“We were unlucky not to score first. It may have been different then.

“They got a lot of confidence from those two goals and they have great players. We tried everything and we went out fighting, but Milan was clearly the better team.”

Bayerrn were really struggling before Hitzfeld returned to the club that had sacked him three years earlier, but he has turned thing around and they had a kind of “destiny” feeling about them for this year’s Champions League. Well, shows you what I know!

The semi-finals though are definitely set-up nicely. With England again guarannteed of at least one club in the final, what odds on it being an all English final for the first time? Believe, I promise not to make any more predictions about this year’s Champions League. Well, not publicly anyway!

The Soccer Blogger