UEFA Champions League
Match of the Past
CHAMPIONS
LEAGUE,
AC Milan v IFK Göteborg - 25 November 1992
The Italian club had long since been playing a leading role in Europe and kicked off the ope
ning match in Group B of the UEFA Champions League as firm favourites to beat IFK
Göteborg. Yet the 55,697 spectators who went to San Siro on a chilly November evening
witnessed a remarkable performance which went into the history books not so much on
account of the collective performance of Fabio Capello's side as for the individual recital
from Marco van Basten.
He became the first player to score four goals in a UEFA Champions League match and
the true grandeur of the 4-0 victory over Roger Gustafsson's side was, maybe, not realised
by the public at large until the following Spring, by which time Göteborg had beaten FC
Porto at home and trounced PSV Eindhoven both in Holland and in Sweden.
In the Giuseppe Meazza stadium most of the early chances did, indeed, fall to the Swedes.
But in the 34th minute Marco van Basten began to stamp his authority - and his sheer class
- on the game. His goals revealed the breadth of his repertoire and the Göteborg goal
keeper, Thomas Ravelli, commented afterwards that he had never felt so impotent to pre
dict what an opposing striker would do.
The festival started with the culmination of a brilliant move and continued with a coolly-
taken penalty seven minutes after the inverval. The third had the crowd on their feet. No
matter how many times the replay is shown on television, the technical beauty of his spec
tacular overhead scissors-kick still takes the breath away. A minute later, he struck the
fourth to complete a memorable evening.
The performance not only set Milan on the road to the UEFA Champions League final, but
also changed the course of the Golden Ball. Hristo Stoichkov admitted later that, after hel
ping Barcelona to don the European crown in 1992, he was expecting to be named
European Footballer of the Year. "But when I heard that Marco van Basten had scored
those four goals just a few weeks before
the poll, I feared the worst," he confes
sed. The Bulgarian wept when his fears
were confirmed and Van Basten took the
continental award.
Four-goal Marco van Basten takes on the IFK
Göteborg goalkeeper Thomas Ravelli, while his
AC Milan team-mate Frank Rijkaard looks on.
PHOTO: RICHIARDI
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