Fifteen years on from a Serie A side winning the Champions League, Atlético Madrid are the blueprint for return to the top
I am also a child of Italian football. My school was called AC Milan. The 4-0 win against Barcelona in the 1994 Champions League final was the benchmark in my training for how a team attack and defend together. What distances do we keep? Who is responsible for winning the ball? When are cross-field passes forbidden? No other game was shown more often by our Swedish chief instructor Björn Andersson; he must have seen it a hundred times.
My other experience of Italy: I suffered heavy defeats during my career. In my youth, playing against Italian teams was a nightmare. At tournaments in Sicily, Viareggio or Sardinia, we got nothing for free and always took a beating. Later, we lost the semi-finals of the 2006 World Cup and the 2012 Euro with the national team.
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