AC Milan coach Ancelotti says his team has all it needs

Despite Milan's resistance to signing big names this offseason, Carlo Ancelotti (right) thinks the club can defend its European title. Johannes Simon/Bongarts/Getty Images

By Paddy Agnew, Special to SI.com, World Soccer

If you suggest to AC Milan coach Carlo Ancelotti that his side is too old and that perhaps the club has failed to adequately strengthen itself with new signings this summer, he just smiles. In fact, as he sits at the boardroom table at Milan's lair, Milanello, he sounds very upbeat about the new season.

"The mistake that everyone makes is to think that this is an old team, but I say that perhaps we haven't even reached full maturity yet," he says. "I am happy that people think that. We have players such as [Massimo] Oddo and [Marek] Jankulovski who were in their first season in [the Champions League] last year, and then we have a backbone to the team, guys such as [Gennaro] Gattuso and [Andrea] Pirlo, who are just now at their full maturity. When I look forward to this season, I get a distinctly positive feeling. Our win in the Champions League was a huge stimulus, it has done so much for us."

So, what lies ahead? First, there is the defense of that crown to consider. Ancelotti says: "We start off every season wanting to win everything but the Champions League is something special; it's part of our DNA."

On the home front, he argues his side will give reigning champion and city cousin Internazionale a real run for its money. "The gap between us and Inter of last season has been wiped out," he insists. "Right now, Inter, Milan and Roma could all win the title, while Juventus, too, could yet play a role."

So just how special was that win over Liverpool in Athens, Milan's seventh European Cup triumph? Twelve months ago, it had hardly looked like Champions League winners. It had started off the season under the shadow of the Calciopoli match-fixing scandal. Not only was the club penalized eight points for the 2006-07 season, but also the deduction from their previous season's tally meant that it dropped to third place from second in the final '05-06 Serie A table and was thus forced to enter the Champions League qualifiers instead of going directly into the group stage.

Milan did progress, beating Red Star Belgrade 3-1 on aggregate, but otherwise had a difficult start. August is traditionally a preseason training month for Italian clubs and key Milan players such as World Cup winners Pirlo and Gattuso and Brazilian Kaká showed up late for training in the wake of their exertions in Germany. The squad had also been weakened by the sale of talismanic striker Andriy Shevchenko to Chelsea. In addition, the Calciopoli scandal had seriously undermined the team's mental well-being.

Almost immediately, Milan was out of the Serie A running (because of its points penalty, but also some indifferent results) and hardly distinguished itself by losing its last two Champions League group games, 1-0 to AEK in Athens and 2-0 to Lille at San Siro.

"It's always our hope to win the Champions League but last season we pulled it off in the midst of many difficulties," Ancelotti says. "At one stage, there was the risk that this Milan might have finished its cycle, but the players came good. The turning point was undoubtedly the second leg away to Bayern Munich [in the quarterfinals; Milan won 2-0, 4-2 on aggregate]. For me, this was the most difficult Champions League campaign of all, but for that reason, the most satisfying, the best win of my career."

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