Cruyff calls it wrong

By Patrick Hart

'Dream team'
Not that Cruyff and Barcelona's confidence was unwarranted. The so-called 'Dream Team' had been Spanish champions four years running, and were looking to add to their Champions' Cup triumph at Wembley two years earlier.

Marseille defeat
Yet at the Olympic stadium they met their match in Fabio Capello's Milan, themselves European finalists in three of the previous five seasons. Winners in 1989 and '90, they had lost out to Olympique de Marseille 12 months before, but had bounced back to dominate the new-look competition.

Group winners
The Champions League now included a quarter-final group stage, followed by semi-finals, and the Rossoneri topped their section by going undefeated against FC Porto, SV Werder Bremen and RSC Anderlecht.

Seeing red
In the last four, they beat AS Monaco FC, runners-up in the other group, in a one-off match played at San Siro. Marcel Desailly, Demetrio Albertini and Daniele Massaro scored the goals, though no less significant were the yellow and red cards shown to Franco Baresi and Alessandro Costacurta, which ruled both defenders out of the final.

People's favourites
Just as Milan overcame the handicap of Costacurta's first-half dismissal against Monaco, however, so they would make light of those suspensions against Barcelona. The Catalan side had produced what one player called "our best game of the season" to defeat Porto 3-0 in the other semi-final. They had fearsome forwards in Romario and Hristo Stoichkov, played a perpetual motion style, and were justifiably many people's favourites.

No escape
Barcelona, in fact, had lost only once in their European campaign, away to FC Dynamo Kyiv in a first round first-leg tie. But in Athens, they would not have the escape clause of a return leg. And how they needed one.

Capello's call
Milan took the game by the scruff of the neck, with Desailly and Dejan Savicevic occupying the lead roles many had expected Romario and Stoichkov to take. Capello would later say: "We knew what Barcelona's strengths were and we found the answers to them. It was a victory of tactics and speed. We were the quicker team."

Reversal of fortunes
Milan were first off the mark when Savicevic fed Massaro to score after 22 minutes. Then the veteran Roberto Donadoni supplied Massaro to add a second on the stroke of half-time. Following his costly misses against Marseille the previous year, Massaro was grateful for this reversal of fortunes. "Last year my efforts went two or three centimetres wide. This time I scored twice," he said. "That's football."

Savicevic strike
Sadly for them, Barcelona's luck did not change after the break. Savicevic got the goal his performance deserved two minutes into the second half - a sublime strike over goalkeeper Andoni Zubizarreta after he had lobbed his marker. Next Desailly, a winner with Marseille, raced on to Albertini's pass to make it 4-0 after 58 minutes.

Victory for football
Cruyff had said a win for his team would be a victory for football. He had not predicted that Milan would get the purists purring. The only consolation for him would come the next year when Cruyff's old team Ajax beat Milan in the final, in what was the Rossoneri's last appearance at this stage of the competition.