AC Milan: Victors of San Siro
Nadia Zein
Politics Editor
The team that had once bore legends like Riccardo Kaká, Andrea Pirlo, Rui Costa, Andriy Shevchenko, Clarence Seedorf and Alessandro Nesta; plummeted to the bottom of the football world for almost eight years only to be revived again under the most complex, unexpected circumstances with the fiercest of midfielders in its history, Coach Gennaro Gattuso.
A.C. Milan maintains a position among the top ten teams in the world awarded with the most trophies. Between the years 2002 and 2011, A.C. Milan was one of the most invincible teams in the world. If they were not winning Seria A or Coppa Italia, they were making it to the Champions League finals.
For many of us who grew up watching their golden age, we fell in love with football watching the beautiful game that A.C. Milan played. When Kaká was on the pitch, everyone knew that magic was coming. Stars like David Beckham, Ronaldo, Ibrahimović and Rolandinho have all passed through the club, piercing holes between the posts at San Siro with remarkable goals.
No matter what team you supported, when A.C. Milan played, jaws dropped with every breath-taking offensive and every impossible save from Brazilian giant Dida who stood almost two meters tall.
But in recent years, the team hasn’t been able to make any progress domestically or internationally. The club took one plunge after the next, facing bankruptcies, unstable teams and managers, and to top it all off the club was bought and sold off several times.
The situation has now changed under the coaching of Gattuso, who short of a miracle has turned the team around using players under the age of 25 with everything to prove. These include the brilliant 20-year-old Patrick Cutrone and Gianluigi Donnarumma, who just turned 20.
Most recently, the club closed two deals that are potentially going to make it to the history books of A.C. Milan, the young Brazilian Lucas Paquetá and the Polish sniper Krzysztof Piątek. Piątek has already scored seven goals in his first six matches, securing A.C. Milan in the top four above Roma and Atalanta FC.
A.C. Milan has not finished in the top four since 2014. The club has very high chances of making it to the Champions League next season, which might just reverse its bad fortunes. With Piątek, Paquetá, Suso, Cutrone and even Samu Castillejo we might just see A.C. Milan playing the beautiful game again.
