Milan allows its younger fans to see the effect of playing the quarter-finals of the Champions League

Eleven years are enough to pass from the childish age, where almost everything is based on the imagination, to the adult one, where the sense of rationality should prevail; they are enough time to go from playing with friends to playing with your children; they are a technological time leap that, looking at the images from eleven years earlier, it is almost impossible to believe that TV was really like this. Eleven years are above all two classes of students who have done the entire school cycle between elementary and middle school without seeing the Milan in the quarterfinals of the Champions League. For heaven’s sake, it gets worse, it’s clear enough, but the fact persists and, paradoxically, it has brought the new AC Milan players closer to the old AC Milan players, their grandparents, than to the experience of their parents.

For the “children” of the Rossoneri boom of the Berlusconi era, Milan has always been very successful, especially in Europe. This they saw, this they were convinced. There was a selection of history. There were the magical tales of Gianni Rivera and Nereo Rocco, of Pierino Prati and Giovanni Trapattoni. As if it had always been like this, as if Milan were pulling the cart for a mid-table place, that of the “zero to zero even yesterday this Milan here, / this Rivera who no longer marks me, / how sad, the boss doesn’t even have these problems here” of Jannacciana memory, had never existed. There was more in the Berlusconi era Milan Casciavit, the one from Milan who got by a lot, won every now and then, but what victories.

Stefano Pioli’s Milan Casciavit is back after the second software update. He was handsome and elegant, he had tried to become elitist, he found himself kicked out of the ass by a world he wanted to conquer. They had also played the De profundis Stefano Pioli, deep down they had given him boiled meat, they had already reached the third degree of the process. It helps though great calm, as Enrico Veronese has been saying since the beginning of the season in his column on Serie A, with football, because what was true up until a week before might no longer be true a week later: it’s not science, it’s just a game and in games a wrong dice roll and everything gets messed up. They just pushed it a little too hard at Milan, they thought they were strong and hardly beatable and when they discovered more breakers than they had imagined they went a bit haywire. The more classic snuffer was needed: it arrived in the form of 3-4-3, which Zaccheroni takes great care of.

Stefano Pioli’s Milan from being beautiful has turned into ugly, dirty and mean. On the other hand, the Champions League is almost never a beauty pageant. In the round of 16 of the Cup against Tottenham, a 1-0 home win was enough, in San Siro, in the now apparently abandoned San Siro. He went up on Wednesday 8 March in London with the aim of going through, which he meant only one thing: not conceding goals. And he played to avoid conceding goals. Mission accomplished: Mike Maignan had to make two saves, one with his foot to block a deflected shot, one more beautiful and with effect, than miraculous from Harry Kane’s header. Then of course he also attacked, missed a few goals, wasted a lot of things. He pressed very high, recovered balls in the half of Antonio Conte’s team, he was applauded for malice and consistency for more than a few good deeds.

However, an audience that especially applauded Olivier Giroud, noble Cyrano de Bergerac of football, who never found it sacrilegious to lend a hand, do the dirty work, give a few kicks after having taken several, as is the common destiny of all great forwards . He could have been a bauscia Giroud, he could have arrived in Milan and spent the winter reminding everyone that he had won everything, from the World Cup to the Champions League down, that he has to score goals. He could, but it has never been in his heart to just ask and demand.

Milan returns to the quarter-finals of the Champions League after eleven years. It allows the new recruits of Milanism and the no longer new ones to see the effect that makes them among the best eight in Europe. He allows himself at least two more games in Europe, in the place he has always aspired to, and this is something that unites grandchildren, fathers and grandfathers. Because doing well on Wednesday in the cup was a pre-Berlusconi ambition.

Milan returns to the quarter-finals of the Champions League, but it is better not to remember the last ones, those of eleven years ago, those against Barcelona of the last Guardiola, of the not too successful Messi-Sanchez-Pedro (or Cuenca). It was another Milan, it was another football, it was another Stefano Pioli, then struggling with an escape from relegation and a pursuit of Europe in Bologna.