MADRID — Real Madrid will be hoping that some of Gareth Bale’s magic at Giuseppe Meazza Stadium will rub off on the rest of the team when it faces Atletico Madrid in the Champions League final Saturday.
A victory would be the club’s first-ever win in Milan after 14 previous attempts. Eleven of those were Champions League matches, eight of which Real lost and three of which it drew.
When Bale played for Tottenham, Inter Milan beat the London club 4-3 in a 2010 Champions League match. But he remembers that visit fondly — he scored all three Spurs goals.
“I don’t know about Real Madrid’s history at the San Siro, but it’s not important, the club’s history in that stadium, as it’s in the past,” Bale said to Marca newspaper. “I have fond memories of the San Siro. It’s a good one for me.”
It was at San Siro that Real suffered its worst defeat in the Champions League’s European Cup competition — a 5-0 loss against Arrigo Sacchi’s AC Milan on April 19, 1989.
No Real player has played as part of a visiting side and won at the San Siro. Luka Modric was on the bench when his former club, Tottenham, won 1-0 at AC Milan in the Champions League in February 2011. Injury kept Bale from featuring in that game.
But Real captain Sergio Ramos is confident his team will give the club the San Siro victory that has proved so elusive.
“I enjoy playing in great venues, and Saturday’s is unique,” he told Marca. “I admire the San Siro because one of my idols, Paolo Maldini, played there.”
Real’s all-time top scorer, Cristiano Ronaldo, has not won or scored at the stadium on three previous attempts, twice as a Manchester United player and once with Real.
“We have to think positive,” Ronaldo said to La Sexta TV. “We will win the Champions League.”
Meanwhile, Atletico Madrid was given a big boost with the news that coach Diego Simeone will be staying on next season.
President Enrique Cerezo said Thursday that the former Atletico player would remain at the club until at least June 2017, when his contract expires.
“Simeone will stay next season,” Cerezo told Spanish radio station Cadena Ser.
The former Argentina midfielder has won La Liga, the Europa League and King’s Cup in his four and a half seasons at the helm.
Chelsea goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois, who played under Simeone in Madrid, says the coach is the key factor in the team’s success.
“I remember his words two years ago, ‘When you believe and you work it can be done’,” Courtois told Onda Cero radio.
Victory would see Real Madrid embellish their reputation as the most successful club in Europe having won the inaugural edition, the European Champions Clubs’ Cup, in 1956 when Argentinian Hector Rial struck the winner in a 4-3 victory over fallen French giants Stade Reims in Paris.
Atletico’s achievements may pale in comparison, but the threat from Simeone’s men, who have restricted Real to only one win in their past 10 meetings since the 2014 final, is real.
Before winning two Europa League titles in 2010 and 2012, the ‘Rojiblancos’ last continental trophy was the now defunct European Cup Winners’ Cup in 1962.
Yet only two years after Lisbon, Simeone’s men are back having stunned Barcelona in the quarterfinals, and ended the hopes of the Catalan giant’s former coach Pep Guardiola when it ousted his Bayern Munich side on away goals in the semifinals.
FA Cup QF
replays scrapped
FA Cup quarterfinal replays will be scrapped from next season, the Football Association announced Thursday.
The last-eight stage of the cup competition will revert to a sudden-death format over one weekend in a bid to ease English football’s congested fixture list.
As it stands, replays will continue to take place in the earlier rounds of the competition.
The decision means the last FA Cup quarterfinal replay was Manchester United’s 2-1 win over West Ham at Upton Park this season.
In 1991, the FA abolished its system that allowed multiple replays in FA Cup ties, with the limit being changed to one replay, followed by a penalty shootout if the teams remained tied.
FA Cup semifinal replays were phased out after 1999. Ryan Giggs settled the last semifinal replay with his famous solo goal for Manchester United against Arsenal at Villa Park.— Agencies
