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Time for Milan to re-find Glory Years

“It’s time for Milan to start being Milan again…”

Beppe Sapienza, spokesman for Serie A giants AC Milan, is the speaker. Like just about everyone else at Milan, he is hopeful that, after at least three disappointing seasons, the seven times Champions Cup/League winners can this year re-find their rightful place at the top of both Italian and European football.

Milan last won a European trophy when beating Liverpool in the 2007 Champions League final in Athens, whilst they last won the Italian title in the 2010-11 season when coached by current Juventus maestro, Massimiliano Allegri. Last season, the club finished a lowly tenth in Serie A.

Even as we spoke with Pazienza, potentially monumentous events were taking place just down the road at the San Martino, Arcore villa of the club’s charismatic owner, media tycoon and former Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi. Guest for lunch at Arcore was Thai businessman, Bee Taechaubol, founder of the Thai Prime Company Limited and someone reportedly ready to splash out €480 million for a 48% holding in AC Milan.

Messers Berlusconi and Bee will be trying to tie down the details of what could be a complex deal, especially if the latter, as reported, is keen to increase his shareholding over the next two years. Until the deal is in the bag, no one at Milan wants to comment on its potential signficance. What is clear, however, is that following on from the example of city cousins, Inter Milan, now 70% controlled by Indonesian tycoon, Erick Thohir, AC Milan realise the need to both develop new business markets and to attract new capital.

In the meantime, the club has been ringing the changes in terms of its personnel. A new strike force of ex-Seville FC striker, Colombian Carlo Bacca and ex-Shaktar Donetsk striker, Brazilian Luiz Adriano, as well as the purchase of the former Genoa midfielder, Italian international Andrea Bertolacci (for €20 million) all augur well.

Yet, arguably the most signficant “new boy” at the club this season will be the talented Serbian coach Sinisa Mihajlovic, who takes over from former Milan striker, Pippo Inzaghi, sacked at the end of last season. In his days as a player, especially in Sven Goran Eriksson’s title-winning Lazio side back in 2000, Mihajlovic always looked like an intelligent defender, someone able to read the game well from his left back berth, whilst equipped with a mule-kick of a powerful free kick.

Not for nothing when Eriksson moved to Lazio from Sampdoria, he told the Roman club he would want to bring Mijahlovic with him from Genoa, given the value he placed on his footballing intelligence. Not for nothing, too, another player brought by Eriksson to Lazio from Sampdoria was a certain Roberto Mancini, who, like Mihajlovic, was another of those in the “coach on the pitch” variety.

As a player, Mihajlovic was nothing if not a “tough” character. Others might use other adjectives. Involved in an alleged racist incident when he abused Arsenal’s Patrick Vieira during a Champions League tie, he remains best known for his friendship with the indicted (and subsequently murdered) Serbian war criminal, Arkan, for whom he wrote an obituary in a Belgrade daily.

Asked about that friendship many years later, Mihajlovic told the “Corriere di Bologna: “I would write that obituary again because Arkan was a friend. He was a hero for the Serbian people. He was a real friend, he was head of the Red Star Belgrade ultras when I played there. I don’t deny or abandon my friends….”

As we said, the new look AC Milan is in the hands of one tough hombre.