Champions League: Record-Breaking Pippo

By: Martha | December 4th, 2007

Yeah, I scored. Whatever. With his second-half goal today, Pippo Inzaghi both passed Gerd Muller’s all-time UEFA scoring record and put Milan through at the top of Group D, with room to spare. No matter how much difficulty he has finding the back of the net in Serie A, or how long he has to wait to get another shot with the Azzurri, Inzaghi has always, always been able to score in Europe; the goal today was his 63rd in only 98 European matches.

Though Carlo Ancelotti for some reason refused to rest any of his road-worn midfielders, he did start the match with a defense full of stand-ins: Željko Kalac replaced Dida in goal, and he was protected by a back four of Cafu, Wantaway Simic (who went down with an injury and was replaced by Kakha Kaladze), Daniele Bonera and Giuseppe Favalli. Celtic, meanwhile, played with an even more makeshift backline, centered around a couple of guys who would be nowhere near that position had everyone been healthy.

Reading JT’s liveblog over at the Celtic site, it’s clear that, while Milan may have had the bulk of the possession, they weren’t trying to do much with it, and Celtic were very happy to let them stroke the ball around in the midfield. The few attacks that did take place in the first 45 minutes belonged to the Rossoneri, but the first half — played, for the most part, at “painfully slow” pace — ended at a very mellow 0-0.

Despite the fact Milan needed nothing more than a point and, with Benfica leading Shakhtar 2-1 in Ukraine, Celtic were through even with a loss, things picked up a bit in the last 30-35 minutes, and Milan began piling up the chances. Super Pippo missed the best one of the match in the 60th minute when he broke in alone and, thinking the flag was up for offside, generously headed the ball right to Artur Boruc, but he pulled it together and got his record-breaker (and the winner) 10 minutes later, when he finished off a good team move from close range to put Milan up 1-0.

That’s the way it ended, and Milan and Celtic are on to the knockout stages, while Benfica head to the UEFA Cup and Shakhtar, who took six points from their first two Group matches, finish bottom and stay home.