Another Italian job

IT WAS one of the final images of last year’s Champions league carnival, but also the most abiding.

In the nerve-frayed moments before the decisive penalty, Andrei Shevchenko was as still as pond water.

As he glanced towards the referee, his eyes summed up the difference between Milan and the many pretenders to last year’s throne.

Shevchenko wasn’t going to miss.

His stare told you told, burning with an intensity and focus teams will have to match if they are going to wrest the European Cup from AC Milan.

Despite last season’s constipated finale, asterisked with the what-might-have-been if Shevchenko’s 10th-minute strike hadn’t been ruled out, Milan looked a more balanced and, dare we say it, more creative outfit as they set out to defend their crown.

Carlos Ancelotti may come from a school of management where the result is the only thing, but, in spite of himself, he has built up a team that can touch upon the beautiful game.

Of course, they had the likes of Rui Costa and Shevchenko last year and that didn’t change their mind-set, summed up by Shevchenko himself recently when he said, “there was a difficult moment for us in the competition when we realised it was not merely enough to play well. We sacrificed attractive football in order to win.”

This is, still, a team that can play attractive football. And their summer signings all have a certain flourish in their game. Cafu was captured from Roma, and the Brazilian veteran will be joined on the other wing by Giuesspe Pancaro, another full-back who likes to trot forward. However, most of the buzz around Milan at the moment centres on a Brazilian youngster, Kaka.

The 20-year-old may be considered too inexperienced to start against Ajax, but early reports have him ear-marked as the latest superstar to come rolling off football’s greatest conveyor belt. It is goals that win football games and while Milan are proven masters at denying thee opposition, their much-vaunted forward partnership have never really enjoyed the most harmonious of relationships.

In the middle of last season, the Italian press came alive to rumours that Shevchenko and Filippo Inzaghi were not simply just not talking, but there had developed a serious rift that threatened to tear apart the team. Attacking partners don’t have to speak, Andy Cole and Teddy Sheringham’s superb double-act at Old Trafford proved that. The miasama in Shevchenko and Inzaghi’s relationship seemed worse.

The compatibility of the duo has always been in question. Shevchenko is arguably the most effective striker in the modern game.

As Ron Atkinson said in one of his more enlightened moments last spring, “If you were looking for a prototype for a goal-scoring machine, this is the man you would look for.”

Meanwhile, doubts will follow Inzaghi around until he hangs up his boots. His hat-trick against Wales won more plaudits than most, just because that sort of thing isn’t expected from Inzaghi. Usually, his contribution to games includes four or five theatrical falls in or around the penalty area, followed by histrionic screams and a tap-in near the end.

When he does hit a rich vein of form, though, he can be devastating.

And Shevchenko realises that.

After Inzaghi netted his fifth goal in eight days in Milan’s 2-1 victory over Bologna on Saturday, his strike partner was fulsome in his praise. “I’m delighted that Pippo scored on Saturday and for the national side. Once he gets going, nobody can stop him. Only he could have scored that goal (against Bologna). It was difficult but he did well to turn, beat the defender and put the ball away. It’s important for the team that he stays fit.”

And important for Ancelotti that this newly-forged friendship between his two strikers is sustained. However much the coach complained of Real’s “excessive appetite for the aesthetic” last season, he knows Real are the most dangerous challengers to his dream of completing a double European Cup success, just as Milan did at the start of the 1990s.

His attitude is unlikely to change, new signings or not. Cafu, even allowing for his advancing years, is a fine addition to the side but Ancelotti is more likely to curb his attacking nature rather than encourage it and this might be considered only a season to blood Kaka. A situation which leaves the door open for Rivaldo. The mercurial forward is known to be unhappy at the San Siro, and the sight of the World Champion on the bench as two teams ran out of ideas to break down two impregnable defensive walls, was a sad one during last year’s final.

However, the Brazilian was given a vote of confidence in the boardroom on Monday, although it is the dressing-room that is troubling Rivaldo.

“I hope Rivaldo stays with us. Our squad is full of talent and many fine players aren’t getting regular starts,” AC Milan vice president Adriano Galliani said.

“The season, however, is long and we’ll need everybody. We only hold on to those who want to stay with us.”

Ancelotti has set his stall out early talking about his new signings.

“Cafu has attacking qualities but that won’t change the system or approach of the team. It will be the same team, we have some new players but they won’t change the character of squad,” Ancelotti says.

Last February, Milan experienced the change in focus that Shevchenko referred to. They were expressing themselves too much on the field, and needed to put most of their energies into the Champions league rather than the Serie A. It is a situation that has a lot of people crying foul about this competition, and it does strengthen the argument that it’s a precursor for a European superleague, but Ancelotti expects his players’ focus to be the same this year. Europe first, Italy second. It was an attitude that served them well last season.

“We had some difficulties in January and February last year. It is a mental and psychological problem. Players find it difficult under pressure all year, inevitably you give something up. I prefer to give up a little in the (Italian) championship because the Champions League is the top competition.”

Milan look far more powerful than this time last year when only the most blinkered supporters would have considered them for top honours. With Shevchenko and Inzaghi finally starting a mutual appreciation society, with the demonic desire of Gennaro Gattuso proving the perfect foil for the creative Andrea Pirlo, with Italian football’s golden boys Alessandro Nesta and Paolo Maldini still the envy of coaches everywhere in central defence, they look an awesome force.

And who knows? Maybe, Rivaldo will even get some games this year.

On Saturday against Bologna, Rui Costa was an ineffectual shadow of the player we know, and was jeered off as Ancelotti called him ashore in the second-half.

If Costa continues to play poorly, and Kaka is still reckoned to be too inexperienced, Ancelotti will have no choice but to play Rivaldo. And there is even talk of the stylish Redondo coming back to full fitness. It all ensures it will be an interesting seven or eight months in the San Siro.

Unfortunately, UEFA, in their wisdom, have dispensed with the second group stages this year, not a jack-hammer to Ancelotti’s plans for a successful defence, but not a decision he agrees with.

“Of course there are less games with one less group and that gives you less chance to make mistakes. But from the point of entertainment it will lose something because last year there were some very interesting games in the second stage.”

The Milan coach reckons the contenders will remain the same. There is never any deviation, although he does expect more of a challenge from Bavaria.

“The contenders are going to be the same as usual but this year there will be Bayern Munich back in there after they went out last year in first round.”

Milan are the team they are all targeting. They mightn’t be the most stylish or most expressive champions European football has ever seen, but they are one of the hardest to beat. From Nesta in defence to Shevchenko up front, there is a strain of quality running through the side few others can match. And there is much more of a team ethic, illustrated in the determined grimace of Gattuso, that they will ever be able to instil in Madrid.

That, more than any other, may guide them towards a second successive title.