Eyes not just across Italy but across Europe will likely be drawn to the huge showdown at San Siro on Sunday night between AC Milan and Juventus.
As La Gazzetta dello Sport (seen below) proclaims this morning, ‘Milan-Juve is back’. At first glance, it almost seems like it never went away: eleven and a half years ago, at San Siro, points in the Scudetto race were at stake.
Max Allegri was on the bench and Zlatan Ibrahimovic was watching from the stands, as maybe it will happen Sunday evening. There was no VAR, which arrived in Serie A in 2017, but goal line technology – introduced in 2015 – would have been enough to ascertain that Sulley Muntari’s goal was good.
This gives a pretty clear idea of how long San Siro had to wait to host a classic like this that lives up to its history: a Milan-Juve Scudetto battle has been missing for a lifetime.
The head-to-head in 2011-12 seemed like a passing of the baton, but it was the beginning of domination: Antonio Conte’s Juve unseated the Scudetto from Allegri’s Milan and began to win more and more.
With Antonio, with Allegri – who moved to Juventus in 2014 – and then with Sarri they won nine titles in a row. Milan waited eleven years before they celebrated a league title win again, going through three owners and eight coaches.
They then returned to the starting point, with Ibra back in the fold, but with an abyss between past and present in terms of economic and sporting management of the club.
Today Milan are a club with its accounts in order, returning to a profitable balance sheet after 17 years of losses and managing a turnover of over €400m, the highest in their history.
After the 2022 Scudetto a run to the Champions League semi-final following, while Rafael Leao and his team-mates face Sunday’s match as the top side in Serie A with Juve four points behind in third.
Milan have rebuilt themselves by focusing on a mix of young players and experienced champions, from Leao and Ibra to Theo Hernandez and Giroud, a philosophy also carried forward by Cardinale and RedBird, the owner since 2022.
This summer the most recent change came: after the farewell of Paolo Maldini and Ricky Massara, the mercato was conducted by a working group with the CEO Giorgio Furlani at the top plus chief scout Geoffrey Moncada and sporting director Antonio D’Ottavio alongside him.
At Juve there was a real revolution at a corporate level. After the resignation of the board of directors (November 2022), at the beginning of 2023 the Andrea Agnelli era officially ended, with Cristiano Giuntoli at the helm of the technical area since July 1.
The commitment of the Agnelli family is the same, as it has been for 100 years now, and in recent weeks – on the sidelines of the celebrations for the century of ownership of the club – they launched a new capital increase of €200m.
The common thread, for both, is on the bench: Stefano Pioli arrived four years ago as an interim coach and has become a pillar. His Milan wins in a fun way, and against Juventus they haven’t lost in five games.
In the event of a positive result on Sunday too, Pioli would become the first manager to amass a six-game unbeaten run against the Bianconeri in Serie A in the history of Milan.
In front of him he will find Massimiliano Allegri, in his eighth season at the helm of Juve, the third of his second spell there. After an initial cycle of five titles in five years, Max has just returned from two seasons without any.
This year, without European competition due to penalisation, could become the year of resumption. Just like in 2011-12, then as now with the Scudetto as the only objective.
