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Aug 26,2007-Sept 2,2007 |
Baresi confident AC Milan will return to greatness
Former Milan captain in Toronto for charity game against journalists
By Luigi De Biase
Originally Published: 2006-12-10
This accursed moment for Milan will come to pass, with or without new purchases. Thus spoke Franco Baresi, old glory of AC Milan, captain of the mighty team that in the late Eighties and Nineties shocked Europe with a new idea of soccer.
"This is just a transitory phase," said Baresi to Corriere/Tandem, "but I feel confident that it will soon be behind us, especially because the team is playing well: it's just unlucky."
However, market rumours abound: summer trading was heavily conditioned by the scandal (AC Milan began the tournament at -8). Moreover, Inzaghi, Gilardino and Oliveira have yet to cancel the memory of Shevchenko.
"I don't think that Sheva will return to AC Milan," said Baresi; "there are also regulatory issues, since he's from outside the EU and our team cannot have any more in its roster. But I don't think that AC Milan needs attackers. There are Gilardino and Inzaghi, there's Oliveira who is also a very good player. I think that this moment of crisis may be linked to the pace maintained in the first part of the tournament, when the team needed to make up for those 8 penalty points. If the team will recover from this slump, if our game will pick up speed once again, then I see no problems in finishing third. That's the goal, since Milan Inter, as of today, looks unreachable."
Baresi runs the youth sector of AC Milan: a section of AC Milan's soccer school has recently opened in Toronto, and Kaiser Franz - as he was nicknamed when he wore AC Milan's jersey number 6, due to his technical similarity to Franz Beckenbauer - often visits the young hopefuls who train in a modern facility in Vaughan.
That same Astra Sportsplex was late Friday the venue for a charity game between the management of the soccer school and a team of journalists which included Craig Forrest, former goalie of Ipswich Town, regarded as Canada's best soccer player of all time.
The game - organized by Leonardo Kosarew, head of the soccer school - attracted some 300 spectators. The proceeds (almost $2,000) went to Track3, an organization dealing with sports and disability.
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