Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Italy's AC Milan Wins European Champions League Final, Grudge Game vs Britain's Liverpool -2-1

The ANNOTICO Report

 

The European Cup (UEFA), or Champions League as it is now known, has risen from humble beginnings, in 1955, to become the dominant competition in the world club football calendar, having had 52 competitions.

 

Italy has won the Cup 11 times,(runner up 14), Spain also has won 11 times ( runner up 9), England won 10 (runner up 4), Germany won 6 (runner up 7), Netherlands won 6 (runner up 2). Then comes Portugal (4) , France (1) , Scotland (1) , Romania (1), Serbia (1)

 

Real Madrid has won the Cup 9 times, AC Milan 7 times, Liverpool 5 times. Bayren Munich 4, Ajax Amsterdam 4. Inter Milan, Juventus, Manchester United, Barcelona, Nottingham, Beneficia, and Porto have won it twice.

 

2005 will be remembered for the most remarkable final in European Cup history. Liverpool, who had reached the final despite a wretched domestic season, were underdogs against the mighty AC Milan before the game and were even greater outsiders when they were 3-0 down at half-time. But the English side staged an amazing comeback that saw them level the match at 3-3 and set up a victorious penalty shootout that gave them their 5th and most exciting European Cup triumph.

Now in 2007, In a remarkable coincidence those two teams are meeting just two years later in a  Rematch or Revenge time!!!!!

 

Remarkably, Liverpool is third in England, 21 points behind the leader, and AC Milan is fourth in Italy, 33 points behind the leader.

 

In England, there are a number of National Titles. Manchester United won the Premier League title (38-game season), Chelsea won the FA Cup tournament (featuring 687 English clubs),and Chelsea (London) won the Carling Cup tournament (featuring 72 English clubs), listed in order of importance. 

 

But, this Battle is for the European Championship. It's also a 52-year-old annual soccer tournament that began last July with qualifying, peeling top teams from the previous season from 52 countries in July, with 32 qualifying by September, then 16 breaking clear for the knockout round by February, resulting in a Final Four were 3 English teams ( Manchester United, Chelsea, Liverpool,)  and 1 Italian team, AC Milan.

The two finalists  England's Liverpool and Italy's AC Milan ( Liverpool beat Chelsea and AC Milan beat Manchester United)

 

The BBC reported that  50,000 English Fans, the greater portion from Liverpool will make the 2000 mile trip to Athens, Greece. And while  Liverpool's John Lennon Airport had tacked on 57 charter flights for the migration, but many will be driving!!!!!!!!

Even more startling is that very few will have tickets, with only 17,000 allocated to each club. Nevertheless, they are still coming.!!!!!

 

AC Milan Beats Liverpool, 2-1

Los Angeles Times

From the Associated Press
Wednesday, May 23, 2007

 

ATHENS -- AC Milan won the European Champions League final Wednesday, defeating Liverpool, 2-1, behind two goals by Filippo Inzaghi for its seventh European Cup title.

Milan went ahead when Andrea Pirlo's 45th-minute free kick went through the wall and deflected off the side of Inzaghi and past goalkeeper Pepe Reina.

Inzaghi made it 2-0 in the 82nd, taking a pass from Kaka in the center, spurting ahead and rolling the ball from an angle past the outstretched Reina.

Dirk Kuyt scored for Liverpool in the 89th, but the English team didn't have another good chance in the remaining regulation and three minutes of injury time.

Two years ago, AC Milan took a 3-0 halftime lead in the final. Liverpool, however, came back to tie and then won on penalty kicks.

AC Milan nearly was kicked out of this year's competition by European soccer's governing body but was allowed to remain and started in the third round of qualifying.

A C Milan captain Paolo Maldini appeared in his eighth European Cup final to match the record set by Real Madrid's Francisco Gento in the 1950s and '60s.

 

 

Liverpool, AC Milan grudge hits high gear

Milan is looking for payback after squandering a 3-0 lead to Liverpool in European Champions League final in 2005

 

Los Angeles Times

By Chuck Culpepper, Special to The Times
May 23, 2007

 

ATHENS  Added time in soccer usually runs about three minutes, so it's exotic to behold a game with added time of 728 days.

If Liverpool of England and AC Milan of Italy haven't been playing each other continuously since May 25, 2005, it often sounds as if that game is still going.

Fans and pundits still recollect with vivid detail that hallowed night in Istanbul, Turkey. Milan's players still cringe at having retched a 3-0 lead. Some Liverpool folk still say the Milan players celebrated prematurely at halftime...


While the memory banks of Europe have expunged a thousand matches since then, people still can recite 54 and 56 and 60, the junctures at which Liverpool got its three goals to catch up. And if you like soccer and live in Europe and can't recall each penalty kick that came after 90 minutes of play and 30 minutes of added time, you absolutely know Liverpool's Jerzy Dudek stopped the mighty Shevchenko for the clincher.

Liverpool captain Steven Gerrard received the cup, held it up and shook it madly out of sheer unlikelihood, and Liverpool greeted a fifth title (third-most in the event's 52-year history). Almost nobody imagined they'd meet again so soon and only 349 miles across the Aegean Sea to the west....

By the time the September-to-May 2007 European tournament had whittled to four clubs, England had dominated the season and hoarded three semifinal spots.

Chatter had it that the English population would pretty much relocate to Gr eece for a festival of staggering beeriness where the top two English clubs, Manchester United and Chelsea, would spar, so it came as a huh  that the biggest game of the year would include, well, neither.

In dramatic second games in the two-game semifinal format, Liverpool chased Chelsea on penalty kicks after drawing 1-1 across two games, AC Milan chased Manchester United in a 3-0 rout that obliterated a 3-2 deficit and ought to have played to classical music, and reporters chased Gerrard's 2006 autobiography in search of spice....

AC Milan Coach  Ancelotti has called Liverpool the worst of the three English semifinalists even while praising a Liverpool defense that might trouble his squad more than Manchester United. And Silvio Berlusconi, AC Milan's president and prime minister of Italy until 2006, has called 2005 "a cup which we simply gifted to Liverpool, when it was already safe and sound in our trophy cabinet."


http://www.latimes.com/sports/soccer/la-sp-champions23may23,1,5483440.story?coll=la-headlines-sports&ctrack=2&cset=true

 

 

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