Champions League: ARG!

By: Martha | April 4th, 2007

Milan v Bayern Come on, Milan! What the hell was that? How did you go from a confident, lovely first half and an early second half in which you were so dominant the Setanta announcer actually said “Well, Bayern are dreadful! If they’re not careful, they’re going to run over here,” to a final 20 minutes in which you lived on the back foot and gave up two deserved away goals? I mean, how did that happened?

Ahem. Well, the good news is that Milan looked great in the first half (Although, despite what the announcers kept saying, I really wasn’t impressed by Kaka, who seemed to think Milan were in white.) — they were all over Bayern, who couldn’t even get out of their own end as the game began. For a while there, they were the old Milan, poised and clever and just a pleasure to watch; Pirlo was magnificent, Nesta and Maldini were together again, Oddo was pushing forward effectively, and Gila was … running around a lot and trying really, really hard. And, when Pirlo scored, the keeper may have been partially at fault but it was no less than Milan’s pressure deserved, particularly given the two impressive saves that preceded the goal.

And the second half started the same way — Milan were ALL OVER Bayern, it looked like it was going to be three or four in no time. But then Kaka forgot who he was for a second and somehow failed to touch the ball into an open goal, and the fear started to creep in. Gradually Milan’s dominance waned and, by the 70 minute mark, Bayern were looking dangerous every time they attacked, while the Milan backs had a sudden attack of carelessness, just kicking the ball straight out rather than actually, you know, passing it to people. The typing goal wasn’t magical but it had been coming for a while and justly reflected the way the game was going.

Thanks to that blessed Russian referee, Milan and Kaka were gifted a second goal late in the game, but it wasn’t quite enough, dammit. Bayern kept pushing forward and finally got the equalizer with the last kick of the game. (I’m guessing Karl-Heinz Rummenigge will stop complaining about the Russian and might instead send him a large gift of foodstuffs in thanks for finding all of that time to add.)

So, Bayern head home with two away goals and a boatload of confidence, while Milan need to find a way to play 90 minutes the way they played the first 60. Meanwhile, fans will rant and rave about whether starting Pippo rather than Gila would have changed anything, while Berlusconi tells Ancelotti to play the useless Ricardo Oliveira instead of both of them just on principle, because everyone knows Brazilians are better.