The small home stadium against the tiers of San Siro: tickets impossible to find at Dean Court, “Vitality” for sponsorship reasons, a sports venue with 11,400 seats. Milan represent the old Italian charm, and tonight much of the city will be here. It is more than a football match; rather, it is a generational clash: when the Milan of Silvio Berlusconi and Adriano Galliani lifted their last Champions League trophy into the Athens sky in May 2007, Bournemouth were celebrating staying in League One, the English third division. In 2003, the year of the magical night in Manchester, the English were celebrating too: promoted from the Third to the Second Division, the fourth tier of the league.
In their trophy cabinet, Milan boast another five Champions League titles, as well as five European Super Cups, two Cup Winners' Cups, three Intercontinental Cups and one FIFA Club World Cup. Bournemouth? The third-division championship and the 2015 Championship title that brought them the Premier League for the first time in their history. Since then, the English club have had time to be relegated and rise again, and today they sit in fifteenth place in the table.
The last time the two sets of supporters embraced was in 2022: Milan to celebrate the nineteenth league title in their history, Bournemouth to celebrate promotion as runners-up in the second division. In 2022, both clubs changed ownership, both under the American flag: Milan went from Elliott to RedBird for 1.2 billion euros, Bournemouth to a group of American investors led by Bill Foley for... 150 million, almost ten times less. The first price includes the brand, the history, the trophy cabinet, the city, as relayed via La Gazzetta dello Sport in this morning's print edition.
What a difference Here we are at the generational clash, and the paradox: the advancing new generation brings wealth. Bournemouth have a squad value estimated at over 600 million euros and revenue from domestic television rights of 170 million euros. It was in 1970 that the English club decided to abandon the red and white colours to make way for red and black, precisely in honour of Milan.
The “old” Milan, meanwhile, receive 80 million euros from Serie A for the broadcasting of their matches in Italy and the rest of the world, always and in any case proud of their international tradition. The value of the Rossoneri squad, according to Transfermarkt data, barely exceeds 500 million euros, with Gonçalo Ramos as its crown jewel. Today there is a test that no predetermined value can explain: the one on the pitch.
