Why AC Milan remains the greatest club side ever
What defines a great club?
The name AC Milan stirs up feelings of nostalgia and aura for those who watched them in their heyday. What is it about AC Milan that fans still remember them fondly despite their wretched form and troubles of late?
What makes a club great? What makes a club the greatest ever? I investigate.
Legacy
To uncover the brilliance of one of the greatest club sides ever, let us turn the clock back to 1988. AC Milan had won their first scudetto in nine years. A mere two years ago, they had been rescued from bankruptcy by Silvio Berlusconi, who had audaciously purchased the Dutch duo of van Basten and Gullit in 1987, with Rijkaard arriving in 1988. He’d also put at the helm Arrigo Sacchi, a coach with no top-level playing or coaching history.
The next year, powered by their now European Champion Dutch trio, they would win their first European Cup in 20 years and defend their title in 1990. It would take another 27 years for a team (Real Madrid in 2017) to successfully defend their European Cup/Champions League title.
A World Soccer Poll voted AC Milan as the greatest club side of all time, the only club side to make that ranking, alongside legendary World Cup sides (Brazil 1970, Hungary 1954 and the Dutch side of 1974). To be spoken of in the same breath as Pele’s Selecao, the Magical Magyars and Cruyff’s Total Football side, is a deserved honour.
What makes a team great
If we look at the definition of Great we get two related aspects:
- remarkable in magnitude, degree, or effectiveness
- markedly superior in character or quality
Greatness can mean many things. It’s complex. For this reason, we need a definition that exists in more than one dimension.
Remarkable Dominance
AC Milan sides of the late 80s and early 90s defined greatness in an era sprinkled liberally with legends of the game — Maradona, Careca, Matthaus, Klinsmann, Voeller, Baggio, Vialli, Romario, Koeman, Stoichkov, Hagi, Guardiola, Bergomi, Zenga — all of whom were playing for their direct local and continental competitors.
They set the standard for European dominance in the modern era. Between 1989 and 1995, AC Milan appeared in 6 European Cup/Champions League editions (were suspended in 1992), reaching 5 semi-finals, 5 finals and winning thrice.
Given their out-worldly competition, they did great domestically also. After winning the Serie A in 1988, they were denied the title in subsequent years by Inter and Napoli who featured their own highly-rated South American (Maradona, Careca, Alemao) and German trios (Matthaus, Klinsmann, Voeller). For context, AC Milan’s Dutch Trio were European Champions. Inter’s German trio would win the World Cup in 1990 with Maradona’s Argentina, world champions from 1986, being the runners up. Unthinkable as it is now, the Serie A was then the best league in the world by a long margin. The world’s best talent was concentrated in one league. The competition was fierce and, very high calibre.
Despite the departure of Gullit (in 1993) and amidst ongoing injury troubles to van Basten, AC Milan would win the title in 1992 and 1993, and top it off with a Serie A and Champions League “double” in 1994. AC Milan were unbeaten in 58 games between (1991 and 1993) - an Italian record. In the seven seasons between 1988–1994, Milan won 4 titles, were runners-up twice and third once.
What makes a team an all-time great
Many teams have been dominant and some ruthlessly. Often that dominance has come in meaningless competitions which are 1 or 2-horse races. While dominance is part of greatness, it cannot be the only aspect. For this reason, the second dimension of greatness — being markedly superior in quality, becomes a defining countermeasure.
Dominance must be balanced by quality. It’s this quality, emanating from underlying systems and paradigms, which makes a team an all-time great.
Systems
For the first time since Johann Cruyff’s Total Football at Ajax Amsterdam in the 70s, AC Milan formulated an approach that was innovative, radical and yet practical. The architect of their system was Arrigo Sacchi, who devised a highly organized yet fluid 4–4–2 system based on a zonal defence characterized by its high-pressing and high defensive lines.
“Arrigo completely changed Italian football — the philosophy, the training methods, the intensity, the tactics. Italian teams used to focus on defending — we defended by attacking and pressing.” — Carlo Ancelotti
Borrowing from TotalFootball concepts, Sacchi focused on well-rounded players who were coached in all aspects of football. The team was seen as one unit with the distance between defence and attack no more than 25 metres. Players would change their role depending on the opposition while retaining their shape. Sacchi’s interpretation and execution of concepts like space, shape, overloading, off-side traps etc. have greatly influenced many modern-day teams and tacticians.
Underlying it all was a commitment to having a tight-knit team.
The only way you can build a side is by getting players who speak the same language and can play a team game. You can’t achieve anything on your own, and if you do, it doesn’t last long. I often quote what Michelangelo said: ‘The spirit guides the hand.’” — Sacchi
In direct execution of Sacchi’s hypothesis of being able to blend a range of exceptional and average players into a compact and efficient team, AC Milan epitomized a system that was staffed by the best talent available who overcame opponents using constructive football.
Sacchi’s ideal was helped by versatile players like Rijkaard and Ruud Gullit and the talented spearhead of Dutch Trio — van Basten, whom Sacchi hailed as the best striker of all time.
The fabled defensive quartet of Maldini, Baresi, Costacurta and Tassotti, widely considered the best club defence in history, also played a part. Schooled in the art of keeping a high-line while remaining compact, AC Milan marched to the 1987/88 scudetto conceding just 14 goals. Under Sacchi, Milan would average a miserly 21 goals conceded per season (of 34 games); or to put it in another way, keep a clean sheet every third game.
Compact in movement, forceful in attack and with the best defensive line-up ever assembled, AC Milan became an unstoppable machine which not just won, but perfected and defined football as it went. After Sacchi’s move to Italy coach (1991), Fabio Cappello continued with this system to sustain AC Milan’s glorious run into the 90s.
Paradigms
Developing systems requires much more intellectual investment than simply adjusting tactics or merely assembling superstar talent and unleashing them on teams whose budgets are orders of magnitude lower. This is the model in many leagues today. It’s great for (one-sided) statistics but not much else.
Paradigms are about systemic innovation, about “contributions to the field”. AC Milan was not just the prime exponent of the game, it also re-defined football. Of the two, it’s the latter aspect — the intellectual “contribution to the field of football”, where AC Milan pulls away from the pack.
AC Milan remains unique in having given the world the greatest defensive line-up ever seen. No other team has even come close. But despite that, they were not a purely defensive side. Instead, they were a comprehensive side. They defended by attacking. This represented a paradigm shift in football.
Behind the system was a thought process that ruthlessly challenged deeply entrenched Italian traditions of defensive caution and minimalism. Sacchi’s ideas were new and initially even counter-intuitive. For example, instinctive concepts like man-marking were challenged and discarded in favour of zonal defence which better served the concepts of space, compactness and shape that Sacchi was enunciating.
Sacchi introduced a new paradigm to football. AC Milan became the system which executed these ideas, as if, using Sacchi’s own words, the Spirit was guiding the Hand.
AC Milan — tallest among greats
AC Milan takes its rightful place in the footballing pantheon alongside Herrera’s Inter (60s), Michel’s Ajax (70s) and Guardiola’s Barcelona (00s). Through innovations like Catenaccio, Total Football, Zonal Defence and Tiki-Taka and popularizing concepts like versatility, shape, pressing etc. these teams advanced football. They represented paradigm shifts which defined generations to come and upon whose ideas, future models were based. They were pioneers, explorers, adventurers and innovators.
When we consider the holistic definition of greatness, in terms of dominance and paradigms, AC Milan’s closest rivals are Ajax and Barcelona. All these sides were inspired by Total Football — Ajax and Barcelona directly and AC Milan indirectly. The ideals of Rinus Michels and Johann Cruyff, football’s greatest thinkers, were inspiring football beyond their time and country.
Ajax’s heyday preceded AC Milan by about 15 years while Barcelona’s greatest sides would emerge about 15 years later. In this span of about 30 years, with Johann Cruyff’s teams anchoring each end, and AC Milan in the middle, football saw a golden age in terms philosophical development, which challenged entrenched notions, dreamt of new paradigms and defined football that inspires great teams today.
All three sides created beautiful football and had statistics to back them up. But how do they compare?
Barcelona vs AC Milan?
If we look at Barcelona’s of the mid-00s, in the six years from 2005/06 to 2010/11, they reached and won 3 Champions League finals and had 4 domestic titles. This is comparable to AC Milan.
Indeed, in the ultimate comparison, an oft-fancied match up between Sacchi’s AC Milan and Guardiola’s Messi powered Barcelona, gave AC Milan the edge.
The quote from the highly acclaimed Xavi further underlining Milan’s exalted status in the pantheon.
We are incredibly proud when they compare us with Sacchi’s Milan. That was a side which made history in football.” — Xavi
Ajax vs AC Milan?
If we look at Ajax, they reached 4 European Cup finals, losing to AC Milan in 1969 and then winning 3 titles in a row during a 5-year period which defined they heyday. AC Milan have a slightly better record than them at their peak. While Ajax dominated Eredivisie by setting a goals record, AC Milan’s dominance was longer and contrasted by setting the most enviable defensive records in a highly competitive Serie A, brimming with the best forwards of that generation.
Compared to these two sides, AC Milan at best had a better team and at worst had comparable (or slightly) better records to show for. Compared to these two sides, they either did it better or they did it first.
In both keywords of greatness — dominance and paradigms, AC Milan edge its closest rivals who incidentally are also it’s closest cousins when it comes to defining football that influenced generations.
Quality without results is pointless. Results without quality is boring. — Johann Cruyff
Crowning Glory
Greatness is often conflated with statistics. Title count is a simplistic metric. Dominance is an important part of greatness but not a synonym for it. Greatness is broader. It balances quality in its broadest sense with results in their broad sense. Greatness is about paradigms.
The greatest teams shift paradigms. They introduce innovative thinking and revolutionary concepts, which advance the field of football. Records are transient. To paraphrase a popular quote, records hit targets that no one has reached. Paradigms reach targets that no one has visualized!
The greatest teams invent systems. They develop theoretically pure yet practical operating systems which are self-reinforcing, interoperable and sustainable. They create machines not in a narrow sense of merely producing outputs but in the broader systemic sense of producing desirable outcomes. AC Milan’s systemic approach and respect for teamwork will find many parallels in the world of organizational design, and (LEAN) manufacturing even.
AC Milan was a system that embodied a paradigm shift in football. A system that produced superior football. A system that married quality with results. A system that despite its all-time great individual talent played as one unit which became a multiplicative product rather than a mere sum of its parts. A system that was ground in innovation. A system that with all its aesthetics, produced winning football.
Their golden run was remarkable for its magnitude and effectiveness and stood out for its markedly superior characteristics and quality. The revolution AC Milan gave to the world will forever remain in people’s hearts. This is the essence of immortality.
When we look at the true meaning of greatness, the realization becomes inevitable: AC Milan was the greatest club side ever assembled.
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