This fella for The Guardian likes to talk out of his backside but have a read anyway... My favourite line is Gattusso's 'We lose with class...!'
Ahead of next week's Champions League final, Milan look like a team determined not to repeat bitter humiliation.Richard Williams (May 16, 2007 5:08 PM)
Croissants stuffed with prosciutto, prawn vol-au-vents, dinky little strawberry tarts, perfect espresso and a conveyor belt of great footballers willing to speak at length about next week's big match under a cloudless blue sky - press day at AC Milan's training ground comes as a bit of a shock to anyone more accustomed to life at our own dear Premiership clubs, where gates and mouths are opened with the greatest reluctance.
Milanello is tucked away in woodland about 30 miles north of the city, in the direction of the Italian lakes. The land was bought in the 1930s by a publisher named Rizzoli, then the chairman of the club, with the intention of creating a holiday village. Instead, after the war it became the training headquarters, its tranquil atmosphere - not to mention the excellent restaurant and comfortable sleeping quarters - making it a perfect place for the players to stay on the night before a home match.
Yesterday the car park was thronged with big, ugly Audi SUVs given to the players by the club's supplier of motor vehicles. Apart from last year's involvement in the Calciopoli scandal, however, that is just about the only aesthetically displeasing thing about the current AC Milan side, who demonstrated against Bayern Munich and Manchester United in the last two rounds of the Champions League that they are more than capable of living up to the standards set by their predecessors.
"When Milan lose, we lose with class," Gennaro Gattuso observed, "and then we come back." Like his colleagues, Gattuso denied that Milan will be looking for revenge over Liverpool in Athens next Wednesday night. But he added, with careful understatement, that the memory of that shocking defeat on penalties in Istanbul two years ago will provide "a stimulus".
Milan began the season with a 15-point deduction and the threat of exclusion from the Champions League. The deduction was reduced to eight points on appeal, and they managed to scrape into the qualifying round of Europe's biggest club competition, in which their record is second only to that of Real Madrid. Until Christmas they performed like relegation candidates, their World Cup players clearly suffering from exhaustion. But in January a week's warm-weather break in Malta allowed head coach Carlo Ancelotti to complete all the necessary physical rehabilitation and to rekindle the team's spirit. Since then they have hardly taken a backward glance.
"It's been a very, very difficult year," Clarence Seedorf said when asked about the tears he shed after they had secured their passage to the final with a 3-0 crushing of United in San Siro. "A lot of things have happened. So at that moment I was expressing joy, at the same time as letting go of a lot of frustration. It was like a miracle, since at the start of the season we didn't even think we were going to be allowed to play in the competition."
And now they are going for their seventh European Cup, while trying to deny their opponents a sixth success. Player after player spoke of Liverpool's defensive solidity, of their tactical discipline, and of their respect for Rafael Benitez's acumen and for Steven Gerrard, whom Massimo Ambrosini called "the strongest midfield player around".
The other shared sentiment was a warning that, in football, anything can happen, as many of them know from their sudden descent through all the circles of hell on that night in Turkey. But you would have to say, after spending a day in their company, that this looked and sounded like a bunch of footballers who, having absorbed a bitter humiliation, are not inclined to repeat it.
