Top 10 European Cup finals of all time

#5 AC Milan vs Barcelona - 1994

If Fabio Capello has any ounce of credibility left, after all the high-profile failures that he’s been part of recently, it’s because of matches like these. Capello’s AC Milan were about to face Johan Cryuff’s Barcelona Dream Team, at the Olympic Stadium in Athens (where Milan beat Liverpool 13 years later to clinch their 7th European Cup), on the 18th of May 1994.

Facing the likes of Andoni Zubizaretta, Miguel Angel Nadal, Pep Guardiola, Hristo Stoichkov, Txiki Begiristain and the Brazilian sorcerer, Romario, Milan already had an uphill task on their hands. But injuries to their most vital players meant, everybody except for the Rossoneri team, had given up on the underdogs.

Milan had to play without Marco Van Basten; without the then world’s most expensive player, Gianluigi Lentini; without Alessandro Costacurta, and most crucially, without Jean-Pierre Papin. So, when Daniele Massaro scored the opener for them and then doubled it at the stroke of half-time, a stong Catalunyan response was feared. It was anything but.

2 minutes into the second half, Dejan Savicevic scored the best goal in a European Final (along with the Zidane volley, of course) – a delightful lob from a tight angle that totally flummoxed Zubizaretta. The humiliation was complete, a few minutes later, when Marcel Desailly scored, thus becoming the first player to win consecutive European Cups for different teams, having won it with Marseille the year before.