Tag: uefa champions league

Filippo Inzaghi repaid AC Milan coach Carlo Ancelotti for his faith in him by leading Milan to a 2-1 victory over Liverpool Wednesday in the UEFA Champions League final. At 33, Inzaghi was considered washed up, having scored just two goals this season for Milan in Serie A, but he matched that total with two goals in the final to give Milan its seventh title in Europe’s most important club competition.

[TV PREVIEW] Six months ago, no one would have expected Liverpool and AC Milan to be meeting Wednesday in Athens in a remake of their 2005 UEFA Champions League final thriller. Liverpool and Milan had gone so far as to schedule a friendly game in Milan for their respective reserve teams. That game, of course, has been canceled as their “A” teams square off in the 2007 UEFA Champions League final. AC Milan began the 2006-07 season in crisis as it was slapped with an eight-point penalty for the 2006-07 Serie A season because of its role in the widespread Italian match-fixing scandal. Liverpool, for its part, was never in the hunt for the English Premier League title. But as has so often been the case in recent years, the finalists were allowed to concentrate on Europe’s top competition without the distraction of a domestic title race.

Liverpool and AC Milan meet Wednesday in the UEFA Champions League final in Athens. The game is a repeat of the 2005 final Liverpool won on penalty kicks after the Reds trailed, 3-0, at the half. Here’s a look at some of the key figures in this year’s final.

AC Milan put on a display of attacking soccer reminiscent of the great Milan teams of the late 1980s and early 1990s and crushed Manchester United, 3-0, on Wednesday night to advance to the UEFA Champions League final. All but forgotten as a European contender after last season’s Calciopoli scandal left it reeling, Milan was far the better team over the two legs of its 5-3 aggregate victory over United, which had been the toast of Europe for its 7-1 demolition of Italian club Roma in the quarterfinals. Milan moved into the final against Liverpool on May 23 in Athens, which will be a rematch of the 2005 final in which Milan blew a 3-0 halftime lead and lost to Liverpool on penalty kicks.

AC Milan and Liverpool, who meet in the final of the UEFA Champions League on May 23 in Athens, have a long history of success in Europe. Before they met in the 2005 final, they had won a combined 11 European Cup titles in 14 appearances in the final. Milan’s six championships rank second behind only Real Madrid’s nine. Liverpool’s come-from-behind victory over Milan in Istanbul was the Reds’ fifth title in six appearances in the final.