Article on the 1994 CL final between Milan-Barça.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2012/mar/28/barcelona-milan-champions-league-1994 I'd hate to see Barcelona win this competition again, would prefer Mourinho.
"Barcelona are favourites," Cruyff said. "We're more complete, competitive and experienced than [in the 1992 final] at Wembley. Milan are nothing out of this world. They base their game on defence, we base ours on attack." To illustrate the point, Cruyff noted that while he had signed Romário, the Brazilian who had scored 30 in 33 games, Milan had spent the same on Marcel Desailly. "That," he said, "is telling." "Cruyff's words were inappropriate and really struck the team," Billy Costacurta recalled. "Had they not been, things might have been different."
On the morning of the match, the Catalan newspaper El Mundo Deportivo claimed that Barcelona were at their "sweetest moment", against "the poorest Milan of the Berlusconi era: Cruyff is a winner. [Fabio] Capello, by contrast, has not been up to the task internationally." Ruud Gullit, Marco van Basten and Frank Rijkaard had gone. Milan were without two of their back four: Costacurta and Franco Baresi. "We weren't favourites," Paolo Maldini recalled. Barcelona knew that only too well.
Cruyff's team talk at Wembley had been: "Go out and enjoy yourselves". His team-talk in Athens was: "You're better than them, you're going to win." In 1992, he was hailed as a genius. In 1994, he was derided as a fool.
Milan smothered the Barcelona midfield. Desailly dominated, Demetrio Albertini created. Guardiola couldn't settle, Barcelona couldn't bring the ball out. Romário never saw it, nor did Hristo Stoichkov. "It was not that we played badly," Cruyff said afterwards, "it was that we did not play at all."
Milan scored twice in the first half, Daniele Massaro getting both. Two minutes into the second half Dejan Savicevic scored a glorious lob. "When the third went in, we knew it was over," the Barcelona goalkeeper Andoni Zubizarreta recalls. "That was the worst night of my career." It finished 4-0, the biggest margin in a Champions League final. So much for boring, defensive Milan. Massaro collected his medal in Stoichkov's shirt – the Bulgarian was his hero. It was Milan's fifth European Cup; Barcelona had one.