It’s hard to believe that out of one of the most shameful chapters in Milan Derby history came one of its most beautiful images.
The last meeting of AC Milan and Inter in the Champions League took place in April 2005 and was abandoned in a scene more reminiscent of Dante’s inferno than a sporting spectacle. Yet the legacy of this game is a story of hope and comradery, all thanks to a split second decision to press down on a shutter release button. Against an apocalyptic backdrop of smoke and burning objects stood Inter’s Marco Materazzi, with his elbow casually leaning on the shoulder of AC Milan’s Rui Costa. They stood together, watching the chaos unfold. As the two teams prepare to face each other again in the 2023 Champions League semi final, the image is once again doing the rounds across social and print media.
The man who took the photograph, one of the most iconic taken in the history of the sport in Italy, is Stefano Rellandini.
18 years on, he is sat in his office in Paris where he works as the editor of Agence France Presse. He looks every inch the Milanese – eyes bright, shining through designer glasses as he muses upon the meaning of the photograph.
“Friendship. That image reminds me that football is not just fighting between supporters. It’s not just money. It’s not just business. I know that players from different teams are friends, they eat together at restaurants and spend free time together. When I look at that picture, I’m reminded that football is the most beautiful game in the world.”
Rellandini was drawn to this moment on the pitch owing to the contrast, not just in size between the two men, but also their footballing personalities.
“I was looking through my camera searching for a picture to file which could show the atmosphere and what was going on at that time. Suddenly, I stopped because I saw Materazzi and Rui Costa next to each other. If you remember, Materazzi back then didn’t have the best reputation, he was a really hard player and would win at all costs which we would all see later at the 2006 World Cup. Rui Costa was more of an artist, more of a gentle player – the way he played football was poetic. So the first thing I thought was ‘wow, how strange: here are two different players from different teams with two completely different footballing styles stood next to each other as friends.’”
Fashion Photographer, Joe Quigg agrees that the chemistry between the players is what makes the shot. “If I’m shooting two male models, that’s exactly the vibe I would try to get from them: there’s a subtle friendliness in the posing.” Quigg has spent his career shooting for brands such as Max Mara, Esquire and BMW and, for him, it’s no surprise that the image has become so iconic: “There’s usually a dull green swamping football images but there’s so much tenderness in the pose here. A pause from normality that reminded me of war photography. It could almost be the Christmas truce of 1914.”
The quarter final itself was far from a truce, however.
Rellandini had the opportunity to photograph some of the best players in the world from the sidelines: Andriy Shevchenko had won the Ballon d’Or the previous year and, over the course of both legs Kaka, Adriano, Andrea Pirlo, Paolo Maldini, Christian Vieri, Javier Zanetti and Juan Sebastian Veron took to the pitch. Roberto Mancini and Carlo Ancelotti added managerial stardust from the benches, too. The quality of play in the tie, however, did not match this abundance of footballing riches. Milan were at ‘home’ in the first leg, winning 2-0 with two goals from set pieces. The second half was littered with yellow cards and fouls which disrupted the flow of the game and served as a prelude to the bad-tempered return leg. In the away goals era, Inter had missed out on the chance to go into their ‘home’ leg with an advantage. The misfire perhaps explained by the fact that Pro Evolution Soccer legend Adriano was out with a knee injury and Vieri was only fit for the bench.
When the San Siro hosted the second leg, Inter desperately needed to score early on and their hopes were boosted with Adriano back in the starting XI. Far from being an example of brotherly footballing love, the game began on a violent note with the game’s first photogenic moment. After just three minutes Shevchenko incensed the Inter fans which packed the San Siro by head-butting Materazzi who, true to form, collapsed in theatrical fashion. The referee missed it and in a VAR-less universe, Milan’s Ukrainian superstar was lucky to stay on the pitch and the in-stadium temperature started to rise at the sense of injustice.
Things went from bad to worse for Inter when, after 29 minutes, Shevchenko put Milan 1-0 up. The player who probably shouldn’t have been on the pitch thundered the ball into the top left hand corner of Francesco Toldo’s net. Few goal scoring chances followed despite Inter needing to score four but a glimmer of hope came in the 71st minute when Argentine midfielder Esteban Cambiasso headed the ball into the net. This ‘goal’ was harshly ruled out for a perceived foul on Dida by Inter striker Julio Cruz. The rumblings of discontent erupted and flares and water bottles reigned onto the pitch, injuring Dida, the Milan goalkeeper. At this point, Stefano Rellandini’s thoughts moved away from the game itself and towards his own safety.
“I was feeling safe, no question because luckily I was on the opposite side but I was worried for my colleagues. I remember Dida was hit by the objects and the flares. I’ve been in the same situations several times and it’s not really nice – you don’t feel you’re really safe since from the upper stands, they throw all sorts of objects down. The Inter fans were really angry at the Cambiasso goal being disallowed. So they just exploded. When they are getting angry like that and they throw everything down, especially from higher up in the stadium you need to pay attention.”
Aside from his own safety, Rellandini’s cameras and laptop, central to his livelihood, were also at risk: “Most of the photographers would be thinking about their equipment more than their own health – it costs a lot of money to replace this stuff!” At the time he was working for Reuters as a news agency photographer. This role required him to shoot pictures but also edit them, pitch-side on his laptop before sending them, almost in real time, to the news desk to distribute to clients around the world.
The players left the pitch and the pressure began to be put on Rellandini to capture the essence of this extraordinary occasion in photographic form. From his perspective, it was fortunate that the game wasn’t entirely abandoned at this stage and the players returned to the pitch.
“They came back after about twenty minutes but the game didn’t start again. As a journalist, as a photographer, you have an instinct to know what’s going on. I knew there was something strange happening – they didn’t start again to play but the players were on the pitch. Everything seemed almost stuck.”
“I started to take some pictures because the players were there against this backdrop of the smoke and flares. I thought it was the best moment to illustrate what was going on during the break in play. As I was doing this, Materazzi put his elbow on Rui Costa for a few seconds which said to me ‘time to take a rest, this is crazy’ so I’d made sure I took a picture of that image”.
“I took the images off the memory card, put them on my laptop and looked through all of the photographs. I’d taken between eight and nine hundred photographs that day and, with this sequence, around fifty or sixty. There was just one frame with Materazzi and Rui Costa in that famous pose with the elbow resting. If you google the game, you’ll see plenty of similar images, but mine is the only one that has that precise moment.”
Rellandini filed the image from pitch-side and publications from around the world starting to run it. At the time, he had no idea that the photograph would speak to so many people and remain in the public consciousness until this day.
“I didn’t realise straight away. I used it because it felt a bit different to the other pictures. To be honest, you don’t recognise straight away if you have an iconic picture as a photographer. You are too concentrated on the events you are covering. The most important thing is shooting pictures, catch the right moment, catch the key picture of the match and then you can see later, days after if the clients use it and the wider audience like it.”
Lecturer in New Media Art at the University of the West of Scotland, Chris Mackenzie believes the popularity of the image is to do with the multitude of meanings which could be read into Rellandini’s photograph:-
“The lurid green of the pitch, the incandescent yellow of the flares and the red-pink smoke-filled stadium serve as the perfect backdrop to this vignette in a voyeuristic fashion. But what draws us in is the question, what are they saying? The arm of Materazzi leaning on the shoulder of the more diminutive Rui Costa, is it passive aggressive, or genuine camaraderie in the face of a senseless outburst? The image captures this narrative that we can interpret in a multitude of ways, depending on our knowledge or allegiances.”
What was surprising to Rellandini was that his was the only image that captured the moment so precisely.
“You have a lot of photographers at a Champions League Quarter Final, it’s a big match so the stadium is packed full of photographers. It shows you that it really was just for a second, and I managed to capture it.”
How does he feel now to still see it being used so prolifically by people on social media, even photo-shopping it to include more up to date players?
“I’m just really proud and happy that a lot of people like it continue to do so year after year. When I search out of curiosity I see that there are now t-shirts, posters and paintings of it. Even Materazzi posted it on his Twitter! It is a bit of a shame at the way it is sometimes used, without a credit, which makes it feel like it is an anonymous author but I know it is me behind it.”
“It takes a lot of effort going to all the matches and covering them under the rain, in the cold where people aren’t really looking after you. I’ve covered so many football events, shot millions of pictures and having one that comes up and goes to the heavens, you have to be grateful.”
Back in his home in Milan, Rellandini does not have the photograph hanging up. “I have a copy on my desk because a journalist wanted to send it to Materazzi and Rui Costa for them to sign. I got it ready but he forgot to pick it up so it’s stayed in my office ever since. I’ve never printed it for myself or got it framed and hung it on my wall.”
Despite this modesty, the pride this photographer feels is palpable and, as the conversation comes to a close, he reveals a small intention to mark his contribution to the footballing world ahead of the two upcoming Champions League Milan derbies: “I’ll probably buy one of the t-shirts for my daughter!”