Milan has become one of the most successful clubs in world football, along with Boca Juniors, with 18 international trophies won in tournaments organized by UEFA and FIFA. Milan has won the cup, formerly known as the Intercontinental Cup and now organized as the FIFA Club World Cup, 4 times. In addition, it has become the second most successful team after Real Madrid with 7 championships in the Champions League.
On the other hand, it has succeeded in winning the UEFA Super Cup 5 times and the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup 2 times. Milan has won the championship in all international tournaments it has competed in, except the Europa League. At the national level, it is the third most successful football club after Juventus and Inter, with 19 league championships won in Serie A.
Apart from this, it has succeeded in winning the Coppa Italia 5 times and the Supercoppa Italiana 8 times.
Milan plays its home matches at San Siro, also known as Stadio Giuseppe Meazza. The stadium, shared with Inter, is the largest stadium in Italy with a capacity of 80,018 spectators. The matches played between Milan and its biggest rival Inter, known as Derby della Madonnina, are considered among the most important derby matches in world football. As of 2010, Milan is the third most supported team in Italy and is ranked seventh in Europe.
The owner of the club is Silvio Berlusconi, the former prime minister of Italy, and the vice president is Adriano Galliani. Milan, one of the richest football clubs, is also one of the most valuable clubs in Italian and world football. The club, one of the founding members of the G-14, which ceased to exist in 2008, is a member of the European Club Association.
Date
Milan was founded on 16 December 1899 under the name Milan Cricket and Foot-Ball Club (Milan Cricket and Football Club) by two Englishmen named Alfred Edwards and Herbert Kilpin, who came to Milan from Nottingham, England. Alfred Edwards, who was serving as vice consul in Milan and was well known to the Milanese, became the first president of the club.
In its early years, the club consisted of a cricket section managed by Edward Berra and a football section managed by David Allison.
The club's colors were determined as red and black. The team, which gained prestige and fame in a short time under the captaincy of Herbert Kilpin, achieved its first cup victory by winning the Medaglia del Re (King Medal) cup in 1900. It experienced its first league championships in 1901, 1906 and 1907.
In 1908, Milan experienced a division within the club due to disagreements within the club regarding the signing of contracts with foreign players. As a result of this division, the party that approved the transfer of foreign players founded Internazionale, another Milan-based team.
Milan won the Federal Cup in 1916, which was held to replace the Italian league, which was suspended due to World War I. However, this cup did not officially count towards the league championship.
In 1919, the club's name was changed to Milan Football Club (Milan Football Club). In 1938, due to the pressures of the fascist regime, the name of the club was changed again as Associazione Calcio Milano. After World War II, it was changed for the last time to its current form, Associazione Calcio Milan, while retaining the name Associazione Calcio.
Milan did not achieve any cup victories until the 1950โ51 season. In the 1950s, it experienced a significant rise under the leadership of famous Swedish players Gunnar Gren, Gunnar Nordahl and Nils Liedholm - these football players are known as Gre-No-Li. During this period, Milan experienced one of its most successful periods by winning the Italian league championship(Scudetto) again in 1951, 1955, 1957 and 1959.
One of the most striking events of this period was Milan's defeat of its opponent 7-1 in the match between Juventus and Turin on February 5, 1950. Gunnar Nordahl succeeded in scoring a hat-trick in this win.
The club won the Latin Cup in 1951 and 1956, and always finished among the top three in the league between the 1947-48 and 1956-57 seasons.
In the 1961-62 season, Milan won their fifth league title. In this season, the team's coach was Nereo Rocco, known as the inventor of the catenaccio tactic. Gianni Rivera in 1958 and Josรฉ Altafini in 1960 were the young players who joined the team. Milan won its first international cup in 1963 by defeating Benfica 2-1 in the European Cup with goals scored by Altafini. This cup was also the first trophy won by an Italian team in Europe.
Milan won the league championship again in the 1967-68 season. In this season, famous Italian player Pierino Prati finished the season as the top scorer. In the same season, he defeated the Hamburg team 2-0 in the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup final match with the goals scored by Kurt Hamrin and took the cup to his museum.
He won the European Cup championship for the second time in 1969, after a match against Ajax that ended 4-1. He won the Intercontinental Cup the same year. The team won the Italian Cup in the 1971-72 and 1972-73 seasons and won the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup for the second time in the 1972-1973 season. The team, which could not win the league championship until the 1978-79 season, won its tenth championship this season and wore the first star on its jersey.
The 1979-80 season witnessed one of the darkest periods in Milan's history. Milan, which was involved in the Totonero scandal in 1980, was relegated to Seria B for the first time in its history by the decision of the Italian Football Federation. The scandal was based on the fact that a betting community paid players and officials money in exchange for the match ending as the community said it would.
Milan quickly regained Serie A. However, just one year later, they were relegated back to Serie B as they finished the 1981-1982 season among the relegated teams.
In 1986 the club was bought by entrepreneur Silvio Berlusconi. Berlusconi made significant investments in the team as soon as he bought the club. He appointed Arrigo Sacchi, one of the successful coaches of the time, as the head of the team. The successful trio of the Dutch national team transferred Marco van Basten, Ruud Gullit and Frank Rijkaard.
With these transfers, the most successful period in the team's history began. During this period, Italian players such as Roberto Donadoni, Carlo Ancelotti and Giovanni Galli were other star players included in the team. In the 1987-88 season, Milan, under the management of Sacchi, finished the league as champions, ahead of Maradona's Napoli.
In the 1988-89 season, Milan won the European Cup for the third time by beating Steaua Bucharest 4-0 in the final match. Beating Benfica 1-0 in the European Cup final match in the 1989-90 season, Milan won both the European Cup and the Intercontinental Cup for the second time at the end of the season. Milan, the most successful team of the 1989-90 season, was chosen as the most successful club of all time as a result of a global survey conducted by World Soccer magazine with experts.
After Sacchi left his post in 1991, former player of the club, Fabio Capello, was appointed as the technical director. Under Capello's management, Milan won the Serie A championship three times in a row in 1992, 1993 and 1994. In 1994, Milan defeated Barcelona 4-0 in the Champions League final and won the cup for the fifth time.
Under Capello's management, Milan won the Seria A championship in the 1995-96 season. At the end of the season, Capello left Milan and joined Real Madrid.
Milan, which experienced a two-year period of decline until 1998, won its sixteenth championship in its centennial year as the Seria A champion in the 1998-99 season. In November 2001, Carlo Ancelotti, a former player of the club, was appointed as the team's coach. In May 2003, Milan, under the management of Ancelotti, faced another Italian team, Juventus, in the Champions League final.
Since no goals were scored during the regular time and overtime of the match, penalties were called. As a result of the penalty shootout, Milan beat its opponent 3-2 and won its sixth Champions League trophy. He won the Seria A championship in the 2003-04 season. Milan, which reached the finals of the Champions League again in 2005, lost the cup in the match played against Liverpool in Istanbul, losing 3-2 as a result of the penalty shoot-out after the match ended 3-3 in normal time.
In 2007, Milan and Liverpool met again in the Champions League final. Milan managed to defeat its opponent 2-1 at the end of the match and took the cup to its museum for the seventh time. Milan won the FIFA Club World Cup for the first time in its history in December 2007. In 2009, Carlo Ancelotti, the second longest-serving coach in the club's history, left Milan and moved to Chelsea.
In 2006, five teams were accused of bribing referees in exchange for officiating matches in their favor. One of the teams involved in this incident, also called the Calciopoli scandal, was Milan. As a result of the investigation, Milan was given a penalty of deleting 15 points at the beginning of the league and therefore not being able to participate in the Champions League.
However, the Milan club applied to the court to appeal the penalty and the amount of points deleted was reduced to 8 and it was allowed to participate in the 2006-07 Champions League. Milan won the Champions League cup in the 2006-07 season it participated. During the scandal period, Milan's most important rival, Internazionale, won four league championships.
With important players such as Zlatan Ibrahimoviฤ, Robinho and Alexandre Pato transferred to the team in the 2010-11 season, the team won its first Serie A championship since the 2003-04 season and won its eighteenth league championship.
Sรฉrgio Conceiรงรฃo was appointed as the technical director of the team in December 2024.
Colors and emblem
The club's colors have remained red and black throughout its history. The color red was chosen to show the fiery ambition of the players and the color black to show the fear of the opponents. Rossoneri, one of the nicknames of Milan, whose classic jersey is the red-black striped jersey, literally means red-black' in Italian.
Diavolo (Devil) is another nickname of the club derived from its colours. When Milan wore its first star on its jersey in 1979, it used the red devil logo on its emblem for a while. For a long time, the club's emblem consisted of the flag St. Ambrose. Today, the club's emblem consists of the flag Comune di Milano in the middle, the abbreviation ACM at the top, and the year of foundation, 1899, at the bottom.
The jerseys worn in away matches have remained all white throughout the club's history. It is believed by both the fans and the club that these white jerseys are lucky in the Champions League finals. Because Milan have won the trophy in six of their eight Champions League finals in all-white jerseys (they only lost to Ajax in 1995 and Liverpool in 2005).
However, they lost two of the three finals in which they played home. The team's third jersey changes every year; As of the 2008-2009 season, a very small part of the jersey is red and the other parts are black, and it is worn very rarely.
Stadium
- Main article: San Siro
The team's current stadium is San Siro, with a seating capacity of 80,018. The official name of the stadium is Stadio Giuseppe Meazza ', dedicated to Giuseppe Meazza, who played for both Milan and Internazionale. The name San Siro comes from the district where the stadium is located. The stadium is shared with Milan's other major club, Internazionale.
The stadium has an exciting atmosphere because its stands are close to the field. The widespread use of torches disturbs international organizations such as UEFA.
Fans and rivalry
According to the research of the Italian newspaper La Repubblica in August 2007, Milan is one of the teams with the most fans in Italy. Milan is mostly described as the team of the working class and merchants who migrated to Milan from Southern Italy. In Internazionale, there are more middle class fans who are richer and Milanese.
Fossa dei Leoni, one of the oldest fan groups in Italian football, originates from Milan. Milan's current largest fan group, Brigate Rossonere, has been in existence since the mid-1970s. Although Milan fans have never had a specific political view; The media has long claimed that the fans are left-wing. However, today, with the purchase of the team by Berlusconi, this attitude of the media has changed slightly.
According to a 2010 study, Milan is the most supported Italian team in Europe, with 18.4 million fans. On the other hand, Borussia Dortmund is the ninth most supported team after Barcelona, โโManchester United, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, Schalke, Arsenal and Hamburg.
After Vincenzo Spagnolo, a Genoa fan, was stabbed to death by a Milan fan in January 1995, there is great hatred towards Milan by Genoa fans. However, Milan's real rival is Inter. Every Serie A match played between Milan and Inter is called Derby della Madonnina. This name comes from the Blessed Virgin Mary, whose statue is located on top of the Milan Cathedral, one of the city's most spectacular buildings.
Milan fans often unfurl banners with funny but sometimes offensive messages after the match has started. Torches are also used a lot. However, these torches can sometimes be used maliciously; For example, in the second leg match of the 2004-2005 season Champions League quarter-final, played on 12 April 2005, a torch thrown from the Inter stands hit Milan goalkeeper Dida on the shoulder and the match was cancelled.
Statistics and records
As of 14 May 2007, Paolo Maldini is Milan's player with the most appearances in both Serie A and total matches, with 1000 appearances in total and 600 in Serie A (playoff matches are not included in the calculation). At the same time, Paolo Maldini holds the title of the player with the most appearances in Serie A.
Swedish football player Gunnar Nordahl is Milan's all-time top scorer with 221 goals in 268 matches. Jose Altafini is second in this classification with 173 goals in 298 matches.
The club lost only one match in the Serie A 1991-1992 season, which is a record. In total, this unbeaten streak lasted 58 matches. The series started with a 0-0 draw with Parma on 26 May 1991 and interestingly ended with Milan losing 1-0 to Parma at home in the match on 21 March 1993. This unbeaten streak is a Serie A record and the third longest unbeaten streak in the history of top-flight European leagues.
Steaua Bucureศti's 104-game streak and Celtic's 68-game streak have surpassed Milan in this classification.
By beating Boca Juniors in the 2007 FIFA Club World Cup, Milan became the team that won the most trophies in international tournaments recognized by FIFA.
