Thursday May 3, 2007 08:27
AC Milan Brush Man Utd Aside
Posted by The Soccer Blogger as Champions League
AC Milan 3 - 0 Man Utd (Agg 5 - 3)
The heavens opened in Milan last night and in the torrential downpour, Utd dreams were simply washed away. 3 - 0. I don’t think anyone predicted a scoreline like that. Milan were simply irresistable, particularly in the first half. It was almost a repeat of the 2005 Final in Istanbul. Then Milan blew Liverpool aside with a majestic display of football, they did it again last night, this time to Utd. The only difference was Milan only scored two goals instead of three last night and to be honest Utd were lucky it wasn’t at least 4 - 0 at half time.
Of course we all know what happened in the second half at the Attaturk 2 years ago. The question last night after 45 minutes was were Utd able to turn it round as Liverpool had done? Even though they did have about a twenty minute period of possession and pressure the simple answer was, no! In truth they have really made Dida work all night and once that period of pressure had been soaked up by an excellent defence, marshalled from midfield by the almost manic Gatusso, Milan just simply broke away with a counter attack spliting the Utd defence in two, and made it 3 - 0. Game over!
Gilardino scores Milan’s third goal.
So, it will be a repeat of that most amazing of all finals in Istanbul. Liverpool will play AC Milan on Wednesday May 23rd in Athens. You couldn’t write it, could you? Who would have believed you if you had? I mean, it’s a bit far fetched, isn’t it? But Milan wanted it last night. I think the result from 24 hours earlier at Anfield had a lot to do with what happened in the San Siro last night. Milan looked like a team who wanted revenge. They want another crack at Liverpool. Although I’m sure Liverpool will be more than happy to play AC Milan again too. They will want to show the world that the victory two years ago was down to them and not Milan throwing it away.
Last night’s semi-final started with Utd having the slight advantage at 3-2 following Rooney’s dramatic winner last week, but it didn’t take Milan long, just 11 minutes, for Clarence Seedorf to head down for the brilliant Kaka to drill the ball into the bottom corner out of the reach of Van Der Saar. 3 - 3 on aggregate and with the away goals Milan were suddendly in the box seat.
Milan kept the pressure on and Utd were lucky to survive until the half hour before they conceeded again but in truth Utd could have been 3 - 0 down by then. However on 30 minutes Seedorf capitalised on confusion in the United defence. He danced around a couple of defenders to fire in the second after half an hour.
The result lst night of course ended United’s dreams of repeating the Treble of 1999, but they really can’t have no complaints. You have to admit that they were totally outclassed by the Italians in a very hostile San Siro. The downpour only added to the intimidating atmosphere in the stadium, and when Milan began at that blistering pace, United simply looked as if they were rabbits caught transfixed in the glare of the headlights. Such was the speed at which Milan started the game.
So the dream of the all English Final is over too. And that’s a shame. How exciting would that have been! And I for one, thought it was going to happen. But Milan found their stride from the first whislte and Utd were unable to do anything about it and before they knew what had hit them, it was too late.
I’m not sure if it was just me but I thought that there seemed to be a lack of belief about United, which is just not like them, and I think Cristiano Ronaldo set the tone early on. The first time he touched the ball, which from memory, must have in the first minute or two, he did about 10 stepovers that did nothing and then tried a flashy back heal and simply succeeded in giving the ball away easily to a Milan player. That just produced howls of derision from the stands, got the fans going and in turn it got the AC Milan players going too! I can only imagine what Sir Alex Ferguson must have been thinking at that point but I guess the half time chat would have been interested to listen to. Although ear muffs would probably have been required.
From that point Ronaldo never really got into the game. Unforuntately none of the other Utd players did either. Compare that to players like Kaha, Gatusso and Seedorf. All three were immense last night, the whole team were really, but those three really stood out for me.
Liverpool are going to have to deal with them far better than Utd did if they are going to lift the trophy for a sixth time. I would imagine that Benitez was already planning his strategy and working out how he’s going to nullify Kaka etc before the final whistle even blew last night. I reckon he would have started as soon as Gilardino turned away in celebration of the third goal.
It will be very intriguing to see how he will try to do it as AC Milan seem to have hit top form at the right time. May 23rd can’t come soon enough!
The Soccer Blogger