It’s no exaggeration to say the odds are stacked against Milan going into the second leg of their ‘Euroderby’ Champions League semi final with city rivals Inter. Two early goals from Edin Dzeko and Henrikh Mkhitaryan have Inter one foot in the final, and truth be told, the Nerazzurri could’ve been out of sight by the end of the first half.
Milan need an early goal of their own in the second leg to give themselves any chance, so who better to talk to about scoring for Milan in a Champions League Derby della Madonnina than the last person to do it, Andriy Shevchenko?
It’s been 20 years since the last time these two sides met in the semi final of Europe’s grandest competition, and Shevchenko played a vital role in getting Milan to the final. While it took just seven minutes for the deadlock to be broken in the 2023 clash, Shevchenko’s goal – the opening goal of the tie – came 135 minutes into the 2003 Euroderby.
“I remember everything about it,” says Shevchenko, who received a cleverly weighted pass from Clarence Seedorf just inside the penalty box as half time loomed. “It was a very important moment. The emotions were incredible, and that’s why it’s impossible to forget: the pass from Clarence, the goal, the jubilation, the emotion, my heart pounding.”
Shevchenko still had a lot to do, squeezing past the diminutive but bull-like figure of Ivan Cordoba and lifting his shot over the advancing Francesco Toldo and into the roof of the net. Milan were the ‘away’ team in the tie, and even though Obafemi Martins scored six minutes from the end, Milan advanced to the final and set up the first, and only, all-Italian final with Juventus at Old Trafford.
Yet it could have been all so different for Shevchenko and Milan. As that season kicked off, the then-five-time European champions hadn’t been in the competition the year prior, and their last two attempts in 1999/00 and 2000/01 had been majorly disappointing. In the summer of 2002, Milan scraped through against Czech outfit Slovan Liberec on away goals in the final qualifying round to make it through to the group stage.
Milan weren’t considered among the favourites to win the 10th iteration of the revamped Champions League, but Silvio Berlusconi and trusty sidekick Adriano Galliani had quietly constructed the nucleus of what is considered the final great team of the Berlusconi era over the previous few years. That summer, Galliani signed Rivaldo, Seedorf and Alessandro Nesta. Many felt Rivaldo was the marquee signing, but it was the latter two who made Milan a much better side.
“Sandro and Clarence were two very important arrivals, both on the field and within the locker room,” Shevchenko remarks. “We were very strong on the pitch and people saw that. But the secret was to be strong inside the locker room as well: there was not just one leader, but there were many. And that made the difference.” Nesta formed a watertight partnership with Paolo Maldini in defence, while Seedorf played an integral role in Carlo Ancelotti’s diamond midfield, becoming part of the dominant midfield of the period alongside Andrea Pirlo and Gennaro Gattuso. Feeding Shevchenko and Pippo Inzaghi in attack was the low-socked-shinpads-visible brilliance of Manuel Rui Costa.
In the final season of the failed two-group stage experiment, Milan topped both, including an incredibly tight group involving Real Madrid and Borussia Dortmund. This set up a quarterfinal clash with Ajax.
A goalless draw in Amsterdam set the second leg at San Siro up nicely. Inzaghi scored the first goal on the half hour, his final of 12 in that season’s competition. “A great champion,” Shevchenko says. Jari Litmanen equalised in the second half before Inzaghi turned provider – amazingly – for Shevchenko to head home just two minutes later. Future Everton winger Steven Pienaar scored with just 12 minutes remaining and Ronald Koeman’s young and enterprising Ajax side, containing the likes of Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Wesley Sneijder and Christian Chivu, were going through on away goals.
However in stoppages, with Milan as good as out, a hopeful long ball from Maldini on the left was headed by midfielder Massimo Ambrosini goalwards to Inzaghi, who lofted the ball over the head of onrushing goalkeeper Bogdan Lobont inside the penalty area to Jon Dahl Tomasson. The Dane, who had the knack of scoring vital goals throughout his three years at Milan but was never considered a starter, stabbed the ball home to make sure Milan were through to their first semi final since 1995 and a meeting with Inter, who dispatched of the highly-fancied Valencia in similarly narrow fashion.
“We never had any doubt,” when I ask Shevchenko if Milan were confident going into that semi final. Milan had beaten Inter twice in Serie A, and Shevchenko describes the build up to the European games as ‘different’.
“Usually in Milan people talk about football, but they also talk about something else,” he says. “Leading up to the game, people talked only about football. Fans on the street would stop the players and say, ‘you have to win the derby’. It was impossible to relax, or think about anything else: only the derby existed. We played two games: one in the build up and then on the pitch. And managing expectations was also crucial.”
Unlike last week, little of note happened in the first leg. The enigmatic Alvaro Recoba, in place of the injured Christian Vieri, wasted two massive chances in a game in which they were at a premium. The stakes, not to mention the tension, were simply too high for both. Juventus had all-but wrapped up Serie A by the time the two sides met, and thus the Champions league represented the last chance to win a trophy.
Looking back, the galaxy of stars on either side also represented the last throes of the stardust era of Serie A. Milan were so strong that Rivaldo, who played a starring role in winning the World Cup 10 months prior, spent most of the season on the bench, while Inter lined up with the likes of Hernan Crespo, Fabio Cannavaro, Javier Zanetti and Marco Materazzi, the latter of whom seemed to relish giving Shevchenko the Vinnie Jones treatment whenever the pair clashed.
“Playing against Inter was always difficult,” says Shevchenko. “You were facing players like Materazzi, who if they had to make a foul to stop you, they would do it…” One moment in particular in the second leg is memorable, where Materazzi brazenly neglects the ball in a 50-50 with Shevchenko and knees him in the groin, not even receiving a yellow card or a talking to from official Gilles Veissière. Yet Shevchenko holds no grudges, saying Materazzi was always a ‘quality defender, who wanted to do everything to win.’
In a post-Gabriel Batistuta landscape, Shevchenko emerged as the game’s premiere striker, but he’d endured an odd season. 2002/03 is an outlier in his Milan career as he failed to reach double figures in Serie A, scoring only five times and four in the Champions League. “My season started with an injury, then slowly I recovered to take my place in the team,” he says. “After an injury it always takes a while to recover. The first part of my season wasn’t good, but in the end we won the Champions League and it was wonderful.” Shevchenko made amends the following season by rifling in 29 goals in all competitions, leading Milan to their first Scudetto in five years and winning the 2004 Ballon d’Or at the end of the year.
But all that lay ahead. The goal against Inter was Shevchenko’s last of the season, but he’d got Milan through to the final. The all-Italian final represented the second same-nation final in the tournament’s history, and whereas the all-Spanish affair between Madrid and Valencia in 2000 produced three goals in 90 minutes, this one produced no goals in 120.
Often derided as the worst Champions League final since the 1992 rebranding, the game suffered from a lack of Pavel Nedved, then at the height of his lung-bursting, Ballon d’Or-winning powers. Yet it’s not as bad as history would make out: Shevchenko had a valid goal bizarrely disallowed; Antonio Conte thumped the crossbar with a textbook diving header; Gianluigi Buffon’s save from an Inzaghi header remains one of the best ever seen in a final. Yet it’s true it’s a game of half-chances and probably would’ve been best served had Milan played against a non-Italian side. Shevchenko doesn’t agree though: “it was nice like that, winning against an Italian team.”
The game went the distance and into penalties. David Trezeguet, Marcelo Zalayeta and Paolo Montero missed for Juve, with Dida so far off his line he could’ve shaken Montero’s hand. Kahka Kaladze and Seedorf missed for Milan, but Serginho and Nesta’s converted penalties meant it was down to Shevchenko.
“Only one thing went through my mind,” Shevchenko says as he stood before Buffon. “Now we win the Champions League.” Did he know where he wanted to place the ball? “I put it exactly where I wanted,” comes the reply. “It’s difficult to remember exactly everything about that final, because your concentration is so high, you live the moment, but I remember the penalty very well.” Shevchenko sent Buffon the wrong way, with the Italian diving to his right. Milan were European Champions for the first time in nine years and Galliani slept with the trophy in his Manchester hotel room.
For Shevchenko, winning the Champions League was the culmination of a ‘long and happy journey’. As for the current side, with only two goals scored against Inter in the last six encounters, how they need a modern Shevchenko if they are to have any chance of winning an eighth Champions League.