All dynasties, sporting or otherwise, come to an end. It’s inevitable, like Thanos.
AC Milan’s hegemony over the Italian game in the early 1990s seemingly had no end. Following Napoli’s Scudetto in 1990 followed by Sampdoria’s fairytale a year later, Milan had picked Serie A up and put the division in a bear hug for the next three years.
Fabio Capello had replaced Arrigo Sacchi in the winter of 1991 and created a ruthless winning machine. In his first major job after serving for years behind the scenes at Milanello, Capello’s iteration of Milan was a less flashy but more consistent beast.
In his first three seasons as manager of Milan, they won an astounding 59 games from 102, losing just five and going through all of 1991-92 unbeaten, becoming the ‘invincibles’ years before Arsenal adopted the moniker.
In fact, Capello didn’t lose a first league game until March 1993, when a gorgeous Tino Asprilla free kick handed Parma a 1-0 win.
At the end of his third season, Milan demolished Johan Cruyff’s Barcelona ‘dream team’ 4-0 in Athens that put the exclamation point on the head coach’s first three years in charge.
Milan went into the final unfancied. Their chances were dismissed due to the lack of genuine firepower in a post-Marco Van Basten and Ruud Gullit landscape and suspensions to Franco Baresi and Alessandro Costacurta. Moreover, the chances of keeping both Romario and Hristo Stoichkov quiet were slim.
Everyone was wrong. Milan comprehensively routed the Catalans in one of the best performances from any side in a European final, and it marked the slow death of Cruyff’s managerial career.
So with three consecutive Serie A titles and now a Champions League crown, backed by the financial might of Silvio Berlusconi, how could anyone stop the Rossoneri?
Enter one Marcello Lippi.
The cigar-chomping Lippi had been tasked with restoring Juventus to glory in the summer of 1994 after Giovanni Trapattoni’s second stint came to an end. Lippi had proved his mettle at Napoli the year prior, guiding them to sixth and a Uefa Cup spot despite selling Gianfranco Zola the previous summer.
Lippi’s mandate was simple: bring back the Scudetto.
The Tuscan native stated he wanted to make Juventus less ‘Baggio-dependent’, with of course this being a reference to star player and current Ballon d’Or holder Roberto. Trapattoni had built his team around the divine one in the previous three years, but the criticism of Trap’s Juve was that if you nullified Baggio, you nullified Juve.
The Juventus squad Lippi inherited was a good one, with the potential to be brilliant. Containing Gianluca Vialli, Andreas Moeller, Antonio Conte, Jurgen Kohler, Angelo Peruzzi and a very precocious youngster named Alessandro Del Piero, but it was clear that Baggio was the standout performer. Yet for Lippi, there would be no star treatment for Baggio, nor anyone else.
Moeller was sent back to Germany after two years in Italy, as was Brazilian defender Julio Cesar. Dino Baggio was sold to Parma in a move that changed the course of Juve and Del Piero’s history, with Parma asking for the teenager after Baggio had rejected them, only for the midfielder to do an about-face and accept.
In the arrivals lounge came Ciro Ferrara from Napoli, Paulo Sousa from Sporting and Didier Deschamps from Marseille. All were to play huge parts in the season to come.
Not everything went swimmingly for Lippi in the early going. The opening day draw against Brescia hardly set the pulses racing. A draw in early October with Inter was followed by an embarrassing 2-0 away defeat to Foggia.
Juve looked lightyears away from a credible title challenge. In the aftermath of the Foggia defeat, Lippi shifted from a 4-4-2 to a dynamic and fluid 4-3-3, comprising of Baggio, Vialli and Fabrizio Ravanelli, and never looked back.
Juve won the next five games on the bounce, including a 1-0 win against Milan in Turin thanks to a rare header from Baggio. At the end of November Baggio suffered a serious knee injury in the 2-1 win against Padova and was ruled out for the next five months.
This gave Lippi the perfect opportunity to create the Baggio-less team he craved.
Del Piero was handed the No10 jersey for the next five months, starting with the home game against Fiorentina on December 4.
Then just 20-years-old, Del Piero had chiefly served as Baggio’s understudy but had already scored three times in 1994-95.
Yet it was his time to step out of the shadow of the world’s best player.
Claudio Ranieri’s Fiorentina arrived in Turin on the back of a decent run of form. Back in the top flight after their shock relegation in 1992-93, La Viola went into the game unbeaten in seven games, which included demolitions of Napoli, Padova and Brescia.
Gabriel Batistuta was coming into his own as one of the most fearsome strikers in the league, and Batigol scored in each of the first 11 games of the season, a record that still stands.
During the summer, Fiorentina signed two of the players who, along with Batistuta, would come to define the club for the rest of the decade: Francesco Toldo and Manuel Rui Costa. And the former produced a marvellous save to deny Sergio Porrini’s thumping header from six yards out in the early stages of the game.
The away side broke out into an early lead, when Batistuta was played through by Anselmo Robbiati and the Argentine charged towards Peruzzi. Batistuta scuffed his shot, surprisingly, almost falling over the ball.
With both Batistuta and Peruzzi on the turf, the ball was loose for a split second, but in ran Ciccio Baiano, who placed the ball into the now empty goal. Fiorentina had now scored in every game of the season, a run that wouldn’t end until late February.
10 minutes later and it was 2-0 to Fiorentina. Angelo Carbone, a name unfamiliar to even the most-diehard of calcio fans, ran on to Batistuta’s header down the right-hand side of the box following a free-kick deep in their own half. Carbone took two touches, one to control the ball with his chest, the second to leather a looping shot over Peruzzi and into the roof of the net.
Fiorentina were seemingly home and hosed before half-time.
One might assume that Lippi made changes at half-time in order to turn things around. Yet he sent the same players out on to the pitch in the second half, confident they could at least salvage a draw.
Yet the confidence seemed misplaced. Juve were still two goals down with only 18 minutes remaining when Ravanelli’s whipped cross from the left was met by the head of Vialli, who planted a firm header past Toldo to give Juve some hope.
A draw was within sight.
The pressure was building. Robert Jarni came on as a late substitute for Giancarlo Marocchi, and the Croat’s cross was headed goalward by Ravanelli, only for the ball to bounce off the crossbar and out.
Fiorentina couldn’t clear their lines, and the ball landed at the feet of Alessandro Orlando, a man who won’t go down in the annals of Juve’s history but played a massive part in this game. Orlando raced down the left-hand channel and dug out a cross, sending the ball high into the middle of the Fiorentina penalty box.
The ball reached Ravanelli, but with La Penna Bianca smothered in purple shirts, there was little he could do with the ball, yet the ball ricocheted off the striker to the feet of Vialli, who was quickest to react, and angled his shot into the bottom corner of Toldo’s goal.
Vialli had two goals in three minutes, and now a victory was possible.
The striker had taken over as captain in Baggio’s absence, and Vialli would thrive under Lippi and go on to produce the best season of his four years in Turin in 1994-95, scoring 22 goals in all competitions.
Now with 14 minutes left on the clock, Juve searched for a dramatic late winner.
A Fiorentina goal kick was headed down in the centre of the field by Sousa. Jarni took control of the ball and passed it out to Orlando on the left-flank. Orlando then saw Del Piero make a run into space down the same channel, and floated a hopeful, to be generous, ball in his direction.
The ball was coming over Del Piero’s shoulder, and what he did next became the stuff of legend.
Instead of controlling it, Del Piero opted to volley the ball first time, with the ball coming over his shoulder. The ball bounced off his shin — in truth — and cannoned into the top corner of Toldo’s net. There was a minute remaining on the clock, yet it was the winner Juve wanted. It was the goal every kid dreams about; a last-minute winner in a game of major importance.
The goal confirmed Del Piero’s status as the new golden boy of the Italian game, and in many respects signalled the end of Baggio’s reign as the king of Turin. By the time he returned in the spring of 1995, there was a sense both Lippi and Juve were ready to move on from him.
Yet all that was to come. For now, Juve had secured all three points in a cracker of a game that kept the pressure on Parma at the top of the table.
December 4th marked the birth of a new superstar at Juve and the beginning of the end for another.
It also signalled the end of Milan’s dynasty and the start of Juve’s, led by Lippi and Del Piero.
