Il 23 e il 24
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00:00 23 May is the national Rossoneri party.
00:04 On May 23, 1968, Milan won the Coppa delle Coppe 2-0 in Rotterdam
00:10 with a double goal from the great Kurt "Birdie" Hamrin against the Hamburg of the great Uwe Seeler.
00:16 On May 23, 1987, Milan won the European draw against Sampdoria 1-0 at the Torino City Hall
00:24 with the goal from Daniele Massaro, who also celebrated his birthday that day.
00:30 On May 23, 1990, Milan won the Champions League final 1-0 at the Prater of Vienna
00:38 with the goal from Frenkie Rijkaard against Benfica coached by Sven-Goran Eriksson.
00:44 On May 23, 1999, Milan won the decisive match of the last day of the season
00:52 at the Curi Stadium in Perugia with the goals from Andres Guillermin Pietro and Oliver Bierhoff for the Milanista number 16.
01:00 On May 23, 2007, Milan won the seventh Champions League in its history at Athens against Liverpool.
01:08 Athens, yes, Athens. A cup that comes from afar, which is more from afar than that, really, you can't.
01:17 A team that is born from the preliminaries and then reaches the final, allowing itself to have a comeback like this.
01:24 With a certain type of matches, because some matches of that year I think will remain a football story.
01:31 And then there are players who make up a story, because Pippo for the double, Kaká for what he did in the league, for Paolo,
01:38 for what he represented for world football.
01:40 I think there is, yes, certainly, there is a piece of football history.
01:47 In the final, among other things, I was in the stands because I was 41 years old and I should have quit a few years earlier,
01:52 but I had been allowed to do the preliminaries.
01:54 We played against the Red Star, the first was a bit of a game, I played in San Siro.
01:58 In reality, we went to this famous Maracana in Belgrade and I have to say that the fans were very aggressive.
02:07 The fans of the Red Star were very aggressive, later we found out why.
02:11 But at that moment there was someone from that team who seemed frightened.
02:16 And I remember that I and two or three others, those of us who had been playing for a few years,
02:22 we tried to alleviate the anxiety of our teammates by saying that any little child would have wanted to be there to play a Champions League game.
02:33 And I think that helped the spirit of that team, we won by playing very well and we had a lot of fun.
02:41 The story of Alessandro Costa Curta is the culmination of the prologue of the seventh season.
02:50 When Milan was told not to even go to Serbia, when the fans of the Red and Black were given a lot of insults,
02:57 when the UEFA was targeted by the fans of the Red Star for having re-admitted Milan to the European Cup.
03:04 Re-admission, a bizarre term for those who had already qualified for the 2006/2007 Champions League on the pitch,
03:12 with second place and 88 points in the league.
03:16 But sometimes, football fans or not, football knows how to be exactly this, bizarre.
03:23 It was an extraordinary undertaking, in a Champions League that suffered the most, born in that famous 2006 football season.
03:33 We only knew at the last minute that we had been admitted.
03:37 I remember well the emotion even when we were re-admitted to the Champions League after the second degree of sports justice.
03:44 I call all the players to introduce themselves immediately.
03:48 Pippo, who arrived in Sardinia after the World Cup that evening.
03:52 Extraordinary, he deserved to score two goals in the final.
03:57 He had gone to Roma-Zino in Sardinia, he didn't even unpack his bags.
04:03 Four hours later he was already in Milan, he didn't even spend a night in Sardinia.
04:08 Four hours later he was already in Milan, we started the preparation, the Red Star, and then the whole story.
04:13 But anyway, we should make a book or at least talk for hours.
04:17 In that book by Adriano Gagliani, who knows, maybe, the journalistic indiscretions of Christmas 2006 could also enter.
04:24 When he was fabled of a box of champagne, the good one,
04:29 arrived from the parts of Viareggio to Marcello Lippi, the world champion blue-collar footballer,
04:35 who could have, have you ever seen, become the coach of Milan in the summer of 2007.
04:41 A box of that good one, maybe, who knows, maybe,
04:45 also to push the group, to bond even more with Carlo Ancelotti,
04:49 to play, to fight also for Carlo, to make him stay as long as possible.
04:54 Which happened on time, especially after the 2-0 defeat in Monaco in Bavaria in the quarterfinals.
05:00 Even if the clock is always ticking, it is always ticking on the holidays of the summer of 2006,
05:06 skipped by the players, for the love of Milan and for the love of the Champions League.
05:11 I think that if fate looked down, gave me a hand in that game,
05:16 because I was really the world champion, I had been on vacation for a day,
05:20 the doctor called me and I was in Porto Cervo, just landed,
05:24 and I went back, also for that I arrived first,
05:27 because I said I don't even support the suitcases, otherwise, and I came back,
05:30 but after that year, in short, on August 9th, the red star, the day of my birthday,
05:35 70,000 people, the goal, I think that for me, the best birthday could not be.
05:40 And then, from there, the preliminaries and the Champions League of Athens,
05:43 something extraordinary.
05:45 Then that year, 2007, however, is exceptional because we won the three Cups,
05:49 because I scored five goals, something special for an attacker and for this group.
05:53 "You'll never walk alone", sings historically the Cup, the mythical curve of Liverpool.
06:01 But in Athens, even those of Milan did not arrive alone.
06:06 They were together, all united by hand, all a group,
06:10 all a great, unique, compact team, ready to give themselves to history,
06:15 as Clarence Seedorf summarizes and summarizes.
06:19 I don't remember only moments, but I remember the whole year,
06:23 because the great victories, like the great successes in life,
06:27 do not come overnight, so, as it says in English, "the journey",
06:31 the whole journey, from the initial difficulties of that season to the last game in the final.
06:38 The whole journey, all the difficulties, the group that has been re-behaved,
06:46 let's say, after a very complicated start,
06:50 recovering, finding strength, energy, motivation, unity.
06:57 And this has led to important results,
07:03 leading us to the quarter-finals, the semi-finals, and then I find myself with Liverpool.
07:10 In Milan there is a square, called Piazza 24 Maggio,
07:16 a time called "the square of the market of portati cinese",
07:20 a square that is characterized by the presence of the monumental door designed by Cagnola.
07:26 The door was commissioned by Napoleone to celebrate his victories,
07:32 so much so that it was initially called Marengo when the works were started in 1802.
07:38 Cecchira defines Piazza 24 Maggio in Milan as a "non-square square",
07:43 a crossroads of a thousand streets and as many binaries.
07:46 In any case, Piazza 24 Maggio takes the definitive name from the date of 1915,
07:52 which recalls Italy's entry into the first world conflict against Germany and Austria.
07:58 In the heart of that night, Italian troops crossed the Italo-Austrian border
08:03 to the other side of the land, the Redenti, Trento, Trieste, Istria.
08:07 Even the 24th of May in Milan was a crossroads that could lead to other streets, to other binaries.
08:15 It would not have been the 24th of May in Milan if a unique fog had not fallen in Belgrade.
08:22 It would not have been the 24th of May in Milan if the team had been demoralized
08:27 by the clamorous referee mistakes of that Champions Cup,
08:30 such as Vasiljevic's foul, not validated by the German referee Pauli in Belgrade,
08:35 such as Reikard's very clear goal, not seen by the Portuguese referee Rosa dos Santos in Bremen,
08:42 such as the regular goal cancelled by Gullit for an out-of-game,
08:46 seen only by the Swedish referee Fredriksson in Madrid.
08:50 But Milan, despite all these episodes, despite all this headwind,
08:55 has always been able to go its way,
08:58 until it reached the lands of the Champions Cup final,
09:01 which for the Rossoneri had been in the Redenti since 1969, 20 years on that side.
09:08 This goal was strongly wanted, strongly planned,
09:12 and we were also lucky.
09:14 An ingredient necessary to achieve any result, in any field, but especially in football.
09:21 And tonight I was afraid, because when, after the first 15 difficult minutes,
09:27 in which our game could not be born with the usual fluidity,
09:32 dazzled as we were by the gelatine of the Staua midfield,
09:38 I saw a shot from Gullit, who seemed to have all the crysms of the goal,
09:44 to press on the post and proceed in the opposite direction of the goal,
09:49 and my neighbour, the president of UEFA, George, whispered in my ear,
09:54 "Ah, bad luck!"
09:55 I said, "Do you want to see that tonight, luck has gone the other way?"
10:00 Yes, I had stopped in the chapel of the Nukamp to pray to the God of the armies,
10:05 that everything was on our side, since we were Westerners and Catholics,
10:10 and those gentlemen there, no.
10:12 And then Gullit thought of us again, immediately after,
10:19 we scored the first goal, the game returned in our hands,
10:24 and from that moment on I was no longer afraid.
10:28 President Berlusconi's words come directly from that night,
10:32 the night of May 24, 1989.
10:35 A night that also came to her in turn from afar,
10:38 because from the words of Arrigo Sacchi,
10:41 pronounced immediately after the end of Milan-Staua 4-0,
10:44 on that May 24, 1989, in Barcelona,
10:48 it is clear how much the great European project of Milan was born much earlier,
10:52 was born a year earlier.
10:54 The Rossoneri won the Scudetto in Cuomo in May 1988,
10:59 and were already thinking of the Cup.
11:01 So much so that a few days after the Scudetto's victory,
11:04 the Italian team immediately played a friendly,
11:08 at Old Trafford, against Manchester United.
11:11 A game that Arrigo Sacchi mentions a year later,
11:14 because for him the European path was not represented
11:17 only by the official matches played in the Champions Cup,
11:20 but by all the friendly European preparations of May 1988,
11:25 but also of July and August 1988,
11:28 a year before the triumph of Barcelona.
11:31 13 games, we won 9 of them, 4 equalised,
11:35 playing against Bayern Munich, Tottenham, Manchester,
11:39 Real Madrid 4 times, Werder Bremen,
11:43 Stella Rossa, Steaua, Vitoccio di Sofia.
11:47 This is a great curriculum of this team,
11:50 which not only won, but I would say triumphed.
11:53 If you play a certain type of football with modest players,
11:56 you can do something good.
11:58 If you play it with players of this level,
12:00 you can also make a little football history,
12:03 as I believe Milan has been doing in these two years.
12:06 Presidential words, technical words,
12:08 programmatic words, tactical words, words of growth,
12:11 but there are also the sentences that come from the heart,
12:14 like those of Carlo Ancelotti and Franco Baresi,
12:17 who dedicated the triumph to all the 90,000 Milanese,
12:22 one by one, the 90,000 Milanese,
12:24 who transported a whole people from one big city to another,
12:27 from Milan to Barcelona.
12:29 I have to say thanks to this audience,
12:31 because it was wonderful,
12:33 and I am happy to have made all these people happy,
12:35 who came all the way here.
12:36 I am moved, it was a dream come true,
12:38 because I never imagined I would be able to raise a Champions Cup.
12:41 This is perhaps the greatest satisfaction, without a doubt.
12:44 We were a little scared at the beginning,
12:46 because we didn't want to send 90,000 people to Milan with a bitter mouth.
12:50 We succeeded, we played a great game,
12:52 we are happy, the audience is happy,
12:55 and I think that all of Italy is happy.
12:57 [Music]
13:02 (music fades)
13:04 [BLANK_AUDIO]