AC Milan : Europe's most boring winners?

Back when I was a teenager, the Special Broadcasting Service of Australia, or the "Soccer Broadcasting Station" as it was jokingly referred to, used to screen a one hour highlights package called Italian Soccer. Back then European football imposed a three foreigner rule, which didn't stop AC Milan from adding the likes of French striker Jean Pierre-Papin and Croatian maestro Zvonimir Boban to their masterful Dutch trio of Marco Van Basten, Ruud Gullit and Frank Rijkaard.

Milan, of course, famously went through the 1991-92 Serie A season unbeaten - the only time in history a club has picked up the Scudetto without losing a single league game. Their 4-0 demolition of Barcelona in the European Cup Final a couple of years later was a masterclass lead by that Montengrin magician Dejan Savicevic and French enforcer Marcel Desailly. Of course at their heart Milan have always had a core of superb Italian players, with the likes of Franco Baresi, Roberto Donadoni and Daniele Massaro losing nothing in comparison with their colourful continental counterparts.

Contrast that with today's Milan team, and the differences are stark. Milan have always had interesting goalkeepers - Sebastiano Rossi at times looked as mad as a march hare, but in a 240 game career for the club, he was solid, if unspectacular between the posts. Compare that with Brazilian goalkeeper Dida, who when not making school-boy errors in goal, is busy feigning life-threatening injuries if he feels a cool breeze. His understudy Zeljko Kalac inspires about as much confidence as an umbrella made of tissue paper in a cyclone - big "Spider" has never been the same goalkeeper after his personal nightmare in Stuttgart.

Where Milan once had a central defensive pairing of Franco Baresi and Alessandro Costacurta, these days the Rossoneri are marshalled by ex-Lazio captain Alessandro Nesta and whichever interchangeable centre back is fit that particular week. Paolo Maldini has been a superb servant to the club but should probably be coaching Milan's under-15 team by now, and in the likes of Kakha Kaladze, Daniele Bonera and Dario Simic, Milan seem to be employing the rule of quantity over quality.Gone too are the days when Milan brought young players up through the ranks - their four fullbacks in Massimo Oddo, Giuseppe Favalli, Cafu, and Marek Jankulovski were all established stars when they were bought from Lazio, Roma and Udinese respectively.

In midfield the Montenegrin magic of Dejan Savicevic has seemingly been replaced by a system of "reliable mediocrity." Massimo Ambrosini is the type of player who is made captain of a team because there would otherwise be no use for him a starting eleven, whilst "playmaker" Andrea Pirlo is a personality free-zone. Gennaro Gattuso has been trading for years off the ability to deliver withering glances and the occasional rash tackle, and it's only in the ageless Clarence Seedorf and the irrepressible Kaka - who surely deserves a better stage, that Milan possess any real quality.

Up front Milan's striking options are, to put it mildly, limited. Their number one striker is a 34 year old Pippo Inzaghi who looks at times as if he might benefit from the use of a wheelchair. Alberto Gilardino - an eighteen million pound signing from Parma, must surely be one of the biggest wastes of money in European football. And by signing Ronaldo, Milan have signalled their intent to assemble an all-star line-up of faded has-beens - what price Michael Owen becomes the next to join Milan's "Tour de Nostalgia?"

It's ironic that the reigning European champions should be facing a so-called "must-win" clash with those giants of European football Shakhtar Donetsk at the San Siro tonight. It would be even more ironic if Italian hotshot Cristiano Lucarelli fired Shakhtar to victory, but perhaps the biggest irony of all is that Milan are the reigning European champions in the first place!

Their victorious 2006-07 campaign was practically a clinic in efficiency. They won only three games in a group that contained veritable European heavyweights Lille, AEK Athens and Anderlecht, before requiring extra-time to eek passed a technically limited Celtic 1-0 on aggregate in the Round of 16. They were marginally more impressive in seeing off Bayern in the quarter-finals, but lost the first-leg of their semi-final to Manchester United, thanks in no part from some typically catastrophic Dida goalkeeping. Their best performance of the tournament was a 3-0 hammering of United in the return leg of that tie, and they used all their catenaccio nous to see off Liverpool in a final that was marred by crowd trouble at the Olympic Stadium in Athens.

One would hope that this year's competition is not marred by similar disturbances. With the likes of Ronaldinho and Lionel Messi lighting up the Nou Camp, Cesc Fabregas and company leading a revolution at Arsenal and the usual cast of gritty eastern European scrappers like Shakhtar, Dynamo Kyiv, CSKA Moskva and Steaua Bucharest all capable of throwing up an upset or two along the way, one might similarly hope that this year's Champions League is not marred by the presence of the bore-fest that is Milan's 2007 vintage for any longer than is necessary.