Former Milan CEO Adriano Galliani recalled the time he and Fabio Capello celebrated winning the Champions League in 1994 by getting drunk and almost losing the trophy.
Speaking at an event in Milan, the current Monza Chairman reminisced about the glory years at the San Siro and especially the night after the Rossoneri beat Barcelona 4-0 in Athens in the Champions League final.
Former Milan CEO Adriano Galliani recalled the time he and Fabio Capello celebrated winning the Champions League in 1994 by getting drunk and almost losing the trophy.
Speaking at an event in Milan, the current Monza Chairman reminisced about the glory years at the San Siro and especially the night after the Rossoneri beat Barcelona 4-0 in Athens in the Champions League final.
“Capello and I stayed up late, drinking bottles of wine, and we forgot about the cup in Athens. We were in the elevators, and we spotted it in a garbage bag, a maid must have put it in there.
“We brought it back to the room, I put it in my bed, and I slept beside it. I told my wife the next morning that it was the most beautiful sleep I have ever had.”
Galliani talked about the decision to purchase the club in 1986 and who set up the deal.
“We decided to buy Milan in the new year of 1986. I was at Monza and I told president Silvio Berlusconi to be careful because it would be a very expensive purchase.
“A great Rossoneri fan called Fedele Confalonieri pushed for us to buy the club and he looked over sporting director Giuseppe Farina’s accounts.
“Thankfully Farina had left the defence intact that featured Mauro Tassotti and Franco Baresi, while Alberigo Evani and Pietro Paolo Virdis also remained so we had a great core to build a team.”
He recalled the winning period in Europe between beating Red Star Belgrade in 1989 until handing Marseille a walk-over in 1991 and receiving a one-year ban from European competition.
“The loss to Marseille was born in Belgrade, where we were going out of the cup before the game was suspended by fog. We replayed the game the next day and we won, and we kept winning.
“In Marseille, we were losing 1-0 and then the lights went out and I asked myself if the same God that sent the fog in Belgrade couldn’t do the same thing here? We withdrew the team hoping to replay the game, but that didn’t happen.”
The Rossoneri won back to back titles in 1989 and 1990 before that controversial night in the south of France – where the floodlights mysteriously failed in injury time and Galliani withdrew his team accusing the Ligue Un side of sabotage in the hope of getting a replay. UEFA handed out a ban from European Competition believing it was a ploy by Milan and Galliani was suspended from official club business until 1993.