In 1985–86, AC Milan, one of the strongest clubs in Italy, was on the verge of bankruptcy. The club had been in decline since the start of the 80s, mostly due to the Totonero match fixing scandals of 1980, and they were relegated to Serie B. The club was relegated twice again, but newly appointed manager Nils Liedholm had led them to 5th place finish in the season before, but the club’s financial perils continued, and President Giuseppe Farina looked to sell the club to variety of consortiums.
In February 1986, a certain businessman by the name of Silvio Berlusconi bought the club, and settled all the debts, almost immediately. Performances on the pitch weren’t very reassuring, but a certain young figure was beginning to rise to the global stage. The next season wasn’t a massive improvement either, and Liedholm was sacked in April 1987, to be replaced by Arrigo Sacchi. He was quite inexperienced, but Berlusconi was impressed when Parma eliminated Milan in the Coppa Italia Round of 16. The Rossoneri did qualify for the UEFA Cup, though.
The Rise
Elsewhere, in the Dutch city of Eindhoven, a certain midfielder with long hair and a flair for playing football anywhere on the pitch (Not Camavinga! This guy is the OG), had taken the Eredivisie by storm. Towering at 6ft3, he had managed to lead PSV to a second consecutive Dutch League title, but his strained relations with the club executives meant he was on the verge of an exit. Berlusconi was impressed with his talent, and AC Milan broke the world transfer record fee for Ruud Gullit, paying 7.7 Million Euros to PSV.
The second prong of Berlusconi’s dutch trident was a crazy striker from Ajax. In six seasons at Amsterdam, he racked up 128 goals, in a mere 133 games. He was the top scorer in the league for four consecutive seasons, from 1983–84 to 1986–87, and scored in the UEFA Cup Winners’ Cup final against Lokomotiv Leipzig. His ball control was impeccable, his volleys too pinpoint, and his attacking flair at the time was unrivalled (maybe only by Diego Maradona). The name, Marco van Basten, who in my opinion is one of the unluckiest footballers of all time.
In 1987, both van Basten and Gullit arrived in Milan, and the difference was immediately visible. The team already had a brilliant backline in skipper Franco Baresi, Paolo Maldini and Alessandro Costacurta, but lacked creativity upfront. The dutchmen filled in those shoes, being players of the Cruyffian total football tactical school. Van Basten was injured for six months during the season though, but came back crucially to beat Napoli late in the season, which helped Milan to their first Scudetto in 9 years. Milan arrived in Naples a point behind Diego Maradona’s team. Fresh from winning the derby against Inter the previous weekend, they were in confident mood. Maradona had urged the Napoli fans to turn the Stadio San Paolo into a “graveyard” for the visitors. Paolo Vardis put Milan ahead in the 36th minute, only for Maradona to draw level just before half-time with a gorgeous free-kick. Van Basten came on in the second half, and struck the winning goal. The Rossoneri went unbeaten for 19 games straight, and only conceded 14 goals all season.
That summer, the two Dutchmen blew the footballing world wide open with their performances for the Oranje during the European Championship, held in the former West Germany, with Van Basten’s startling volleyed goal in the final against the Soviet Union retaining a mythical quality. After the tournament, Cruyff was desperate to bring his protégée to Barcelona, offering Gary Lineker in a swap deal. Milan weren’t interested.
The Domination
The third prong of the dutch trident arrived next season, in 1988, from Sporting CP. Frank Rijkaard was Van Basten’s teammate at Ajax, but had a massive falling out with the legendary Johan Cruyff, and was sold to Sporting immediately. Milan boss Arrigo Sacchi saw his potential, and transformed him from a central defender to a pivot, a role he would go on to master. The trident was complete, and it immediately yielded results. The champions pretty much began the new season where they left off and in December 1988, Van Basten won the first of three Ballon d’Or awards as European Footballer of the Year, with Gullit in second place and Rijkaard third. It was the first time club team-mates made up the top three.
In the semi-finals of the 1988–89 European Cup, Milan drew the first leg 1–1 at the Santiago Bernabeu. Milan were strong, but Madrid were… well they are Real Madrid in Europe, what else do you expect? But something unexpected happened at the San Siro. The footballing world was shaken to its core, when it witnessed a 5–0 thrashing of Los Blancos at the hands of Milan’s “immortals”. It was one of Milan’s finest performances ever, a perfect display of the dutch trident’s effect as all 3 of them scored in that game. Spanish paper El Mundo Deportivo reported that “It was a Milan recital, with a Dutch accent: Rijkaard, Gullit and Van Basten all scored. Madrid resembled a puppet in the hands of the Italians, who played with them at will, scoring goals whenever they felt like it.”
The massive victory over Real Madrid set up a Final at a very packed Camp Nou in Barcelona, against Romanian champions Steaua Bucuresti (aka FCSB, the 1986 European Cup Winners). They had just wrapped up the fifth of five consecutive Romanian league titles, the latter three achieved without losing a single game. In that time, they put together a 104-match unbeaten run that remains a European club record. Milan, meanwhile, hadn’t played a European final in 20 years, since their 4–1 win over Ajax in 1969. On the blue and black side of Milan, Trapattoni’s Inter had nearly wrapped the title up, so Arrigo Sacchi really needed a win that night.
“When we went out for the warm-up, we saw the huge numbers of supporters on the terraces,” Baresi recalled. “And we understood that there was no way we could go home without the trophy.” In an age of cagey, measured European cup finals, Milan’s all-attack approach was breathtaking. Milan won 4–0, but it should have been much more; Gullit and Van Basten shared goalscoring duties between them, though both could have got hat-tricks.
The next year, Milan were somehow back in the European Cup Final, and this time it was against Benfica, in Vienna. The trident was a firmly established core in Milan’s team, and this time it was Frank Rijkaard who scored the winning goal, to secure a second successive European Cup. They failed to win the Scudetto again, falling behind Napoli on the last two matchdays of the season.
The next season saw a decline in performances, and Milan went trophyless for the first time since 1986–87, and Sacchi left the club to manage the Italian national team, to be replaced by Fabio Capello. Milan were eliminated in the European Cup Quarterfinals by eventual runners-up Marseille (who lost to… Red Star Belgrade?). Marco van Basten had his last season uninterrupted by injury, netting 25 goals, which was one of the main reasons Milan was able to overhaul Juventus to claim the Serie A title. Milan ran through entire the 34–game league season unbeaten, a feat only replicated by Juventus in 2011–12. Van Basten won his third Ballon D’Or in 1992, and also became the first player to score 4 goals in a Champions League, against IFK Goteborg, after which he was out for about 6 months due to a recurring ankle injury. Jean-Pierre Papin, the man who cost Milan the 1991 European Cup, was pivotal in Van Basten’s absence, but neither could secure a third European crown in five years, as Milan ended up losing to Marseille in the final.
The Fall
But more than the final, Milan lost their talismanic striker to a third ankle injury, one from which he never recovered. Van Basten spent the entirety of 1993–94 sidelined due to injury, and he missed Milan’s Serie A win and 4–0 Champions League Final win over Barcelona in Athens. Rijkaard returned to Ajax before the start of the season, while Gullit was loaned to Sampdoria. Milan won Serie A for a third consecutive time with a mere 36 goals scored in 34 games, but conceding only 15, which was largely down to their strong defensive line, with Franco Baresi and Paolo Maldini as key players to thank for their third consecutive domestic success.
The trident was no longer together, and Milan returned to the traditional defensive Italian style of football. It was successful, but not beautiful. The dynamism and fluidity of the game had been lost, and eventually the quality of the team declined a lot. Marco Van Basten announced his retirement in 1995, following two years on the sidelines, and manager Fabio Capello’s departure to Real Madrid proved to be the final nail in the coffin.
The trident of Van Basten, Rijkaard and Gullit was bedazzling, an exhibition of dutch football at its (second?) finest , something that is yet to be displayed by any subsequent Netherlands team. AC Milan was the first team to have the entire Ballon D’Or podium, a feat only accomplished by Messi, Xavi and Andres Iniesta in 2010. The legacy of Milan’s trident is nearly unparalleled, and they achieved a level Milan themselves have yet to replicate. Maybe they never will…
