■ Uefa Champions League final: Juventus v Real Madrid, Saturday at 10.45 in the UAE
The first inventors of the European Cup never envisaged they would become so quickly concerned with its repetitiveness. The intention, back in 1955, was to establish new summits for the club game, and it was anticipated various flags would be planted on that summit. Real Madrid, not even Spain’s most decorated club at the time, promptly won the first five European Cups.
It was not the shape of things to come. Nobody has, in the last 57 years, managed a sequence anywhere near as dominant, but if you were to ask the group of Uefa executives who redesigned the competition as the Champions League a quarter of a century ago if they imagined their new “brand” would attain the mystique of being un-defendable, they’d have been sceptical.
No club since 1990 has won two in succession. That pattern bucks a trend. Modern elite football tends to concentrate success and titles with a small group of — generally very wealthy — institutions.
The fact that no club has won the Champions League in successive years is an oddity. Many of the top leagues have become more and more monochrome. The Bundesliga title, for instance, has gone to the same club, Bayern Munich, for the last five years. Juventus, who will take on Real Madrid in this year’s Champions League final on Saturday, have just collected their sixth Italian scudetto on the trot.
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In Cardiff on Saturday, Real Madrid have the opportunity to make more history, and become the first title-holders to retain the crown since AC Milan. They need not look too far to seek counsel on how hard that can be. Juventus have painfully known how slippery the handles of the hefty trophy can feel. Juve won it in 1996 and lost the finals in 1997 and in 1998, when Real Madrid stymied them in Amsterdam.
The fact that the modern competition demands so much more endurance than it used to is a factor. The Milan of 1989 and 1990 needed just four ties — each with home and away games — to reach the final. These days, six group games and then three two-legged knockout ties are the minimum requirement.
A long run in the competition requires a deep squad, room for rotation and careful husbanding of resources. Back in 1990, that was less so.
Milan’s starting XI in the final when they retained the Cup – with a 1-0 win over Benfica – was the same except for one player (Roberto Donadoni was suspended for the second triumph) as the Milan side that began the 4-0 victory over Steaua Bucharest a year earlier.
They had an excellent understanding with one another, and good habits. Many of them seemed ageless. The defenders Paulo Maldini and Alessandro Costacurta would go on to be part of the Milan squad who reached, and won, the final in 2007. Franco Baresi, their cool partner in the back four, played for Milan over 700 times. “Baresi was just impossible to beat,” remembers the Benfica coach of the 1990 final, Sven Goran Eriksson.
Besides the iron defence, that Milan had their legendary trio of Dutchmen, Frank Rijkaard, Ruud Gullit and the brilliant striker Marco Van Basten, the latter pair each scoring twice against Steaua. Dictating strategy in midfield, they had Carlo Ancelotti, who went on to win three Champions League titles — two at Milan, one at Madrid — as a coach.
They had a little luck, too, notably when their second round, second leg at Red Star Belgrade in 1989 was abandoned after 57 minutes because of fog with Red Star 2-1 up on aggregate, and Milan down to 10 men. The teams replayed the match the next day, 11 against 11, and Milan progressed via a penalty shoot-out.
Real Madrid were defeated by Milan en route to both those finals, and the 5-0 win Milan inflicted on Madrid in the semi-final in 1989 left the Spaniards both bruised and nursing enough admiration for the methods of the then Milan coach, Arrigo Sacchi, that Real took him on a technical director a decade and half later.
Sacchi did not stay long enough to oversee Real Madrid’s 10th and 11th European Cups, in 2014 and 2016, and suspects his long-standing record, as the last coach to retain the trophy, will still be intact by the end of Saturday.
“Juventus, for me, are the favourites,” said the Italian. “I think they have the edge because of their unity as a team.”
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