Capello on the two moments that made him determined to crush Cruyff
Fabio Capello (Photo by Jurij Kodrun/Getty Images)
Fabio Capello reveals the two moments that made him determined to beat Johan Cruyff. ‘I saw that and told my Milan players, we won 4-0 with the perfect performance.’
The Rossoneri have won the Champions League seven times, fewer only than Real Madrid, and probably the most unexpected was in 1994.
They were up against the iconic Barcelona coached by Cruyff, with players like Romario, Hristo Stoichkov, Ronald Koeman and Pep Guardiola, which many considered to be huge favourites for the victory.
Instead, they were crushed 4-0 in Athens by a Daniele Massaro brace, Dejan Savicevic’s iconic lob, and Marcel Desailly.
Capello history with Cruyff goes back
“I played in a European Cup Final for Juventus and we lost against Ajax,” Capello said in the Festival dello Sport event.
“No complaints there, they were stronger than us, but after the match I saw Cruyff carry the trophy to the team bus and he just flung it in there, as if to say we’ve won three, it’s not that big a deal.
“I didn’t like that, and I was even more unhappy when I saw just before the Milan-Barcelona Final in Athens he lay down on the pitch with the ball behind his head, almost as if he was snubbing us as his opponents.
“I went into the dressing room and told the lads. We won 4-0 and it was the perfect performance.”
It was an even more remarkable victory considering top defenders Franco Baresi and Alessandro Costacurta were both suspended for Milan.
Due to limits on foreign players, they also had to leave out Jean-Pierre Papin, Florin Raducioiu and Brian Laudrup.
KioskNews shows a cleaned-up reading view extracted from the publisher’s page — the original always lives on their site, not ours.