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Yet again Inter were eclipsed, overshadowed and upstaged. 
Gotta says it fairly well:
Milan triumph over adversity to win in Athens
Roberto Gotta
Archive
Pippo Inzaghi's second goal on Wednesday night, a typically opportunistic strike after the Milan forward had tiptoed across the last line of the Liverpool defence, was perhaps the best thing that occurred at that point of the match, for one simple reason. Had the game ended 1-0, it would have been embarrassing to sit here and try to make sense of a Champions League win gained by the Italians on a deflected free kick, at the end of a first half that had seen their opponents increasingly gain control.
GettyImages
Pippo Inzaghi scores a 'fluke' goal to net Milan's first in Athens.
Especially after all the pre-game speculation and previews, ours among them of course, that had tried to rationalize what one team, Milan in my case, should have done to win the match.
All of this was close to collapsing in a heap of gibberish when Andrea Pirlo hit a free-kick with his customary mixture of power and cunning, and the ball, on its way to the waiting arms of Pepe Reina, hit the advancing Inzaghi's left shoulder and fatally veered from its course, leaving Reina stranded.
The preceding 44 minutes had given little clue as to what the final result would be. As most people like to be comfortable with certainties, to separate black and white, the way things turned grey, the way you could not point a finger and say, there, that's where this game is turning, was almost frustrating.
And with Milan possessing the superior technical ability on paper - someone, whom I cannot credit because I forgot his name, wrote that hardly any Liverpool players would start for the Rossoneri - this was more down to them than to the Reds, who recited to near perfection their karma of pressure, pressure, pressure, and forced Milan at least ten yards deeper than Ancelotti's team likes to operate.
If you go back to Kaka's opening goal against Manchester United, Alessandro Nesta had sent in a long, high ball to Clarence Seedorf only a few yards short of the halfway line. That meant no Man United player had covered the pitch fast enough to close him down. Milan defenders did not enjoy a similar amount of time on the ball on Wednesday night, which obviously forced the midfielders to come and fetch it or risk being cut off, as Seedorf and Kaka were for most of the first half. But this, again, meant their opponents could reorganize and react to actually take the initiative, as they'd shown right before Inzaghi's opening goal.
In the second half, wary of Liverpool's powers of recovery and having been stretched a couple of times, notably Steven Gerrard's effort which Dida blocked, Milan tried to increase possession but actually held the ball, as final stats prove, less than they had in the first half.
They did little to show they were the superior team and rarely had an answer for Jermaine Pennant, who'd already shown flashes of his menace in the first half, troubling Marek Jankulovski. Only some moments of exquisite ball control in tight spaces by Pirlo and Seedorf gave them a breather, but the perfect positioning by most Liverpool midfielders on the night, most notably Javier Mascherano and Xabi Alonso, meant the stream of passes which usually go Seedorf and Kaka's way was varied and Milan gave away the ball, or hit passes off target, more then they customarily do.
Liverpool's graft and hard running matched Milan's superior movement without the ball, and at one point it seemed this confrontation between two vastly different sides was going to be decided by Inzaghi's fluke of a goal, which would have been a shame.
Thankfully for the post mortems - but not for Liverpool, of course - Benitez's decision to take off Mascherano and bring on Peter Crouch (an obvious one with 12 minutes to go, so no criticism of the Spanish coach here) upset Liverpool's shape in midfield, and it was Kaka', free for once from the shackles of a man who'd twice run him down on one of the Brazilian's dangerous forward runs, who had time and space to slot the ball down the inside right channel for Inzaghi to score.
It was the end of an extraordinary season for Milan. They will talk about their points deduction in the Serie A and UEFA's reluctance to admit them to the Champions League as a proof it was a case of them against the world, but this sounds awkward from one of the superpowers of world football.
GettyImages
Inter Milan's win in Italy gave their rivals some added incentive.
Sometimes, in team sports, the feeling everyone is out to get you can light the flames of competitiveness much more than mere determination can and, in Milan's case, one can add the fact their next-door neighbours Inter ran away with the Italian Scudetto and beat them twice in the league.
Milan's triumph will now surely overshadow Inter's accomplishment, and a vociferous minority of red-and-black clad young men left bystanders in no doubt about their feelings. They ran out of Athens' OAKA Stadium in a conga line, jumping around and singing derogatory songs about Inter.
But they were not Milan fans. They were most of the Milan squad, including the joyful Kaka, Dida, for once smiling, Brocchi (a former Inter player, by the way). By performing this dance and singing aloud, they also found a choreographic excuse to go past the waiting line of journalists and - astonishingly - several fans who had waded into the mixed zone, and that was as cunning a tactical ploy as had been on shown on the pitch.
Gotta says it fairly well:
Milan triumph over adversity to win in Athens
Roberto Gotta
Archive
Pippo Inzaghi's second goal on Wednesday night, a typically opportunistic strike after the Milan forward had tiptoed across the last line of the Liverpool defence, was perhaps the best thing that occurred at that point of the match, for one simple reason. Had the game ended 1-0, it would have been embarrassing to sit here and try to make sense of a Champions League win gained by the Italians on a deflected free kick, at the end of a first half that had seen their opponents increasingly gain control.
GettyImages
Pippo Inzaghi scores a 'fluke' goal to net Milan's first in Athens.
Especially after all the pre-game speculation and previews, ours among them of course, that had tried to rationalize what one team, Milan in my case, should have done to win the match.
All of this was close to collapsing in a heap of gibberish when Andrea Pirlo hit a free-kick with his customary mixture of power and cunning, and the ball, on its way to the waiting arms of Pepe Reina, hit the advancing Inzaghi's left shoulder and fatally veered from its course, leaving Reina stranded.
The preceding 44 minutes had given little clue as to what the final result would be. As most people like to be comfortable with certainties, to separate black and white, the way things turned grey, the way you could not point a finger and say, there, that's where this game is turning, was almost frustrating.
And with Milan possessing the superior technical ability on paper - someone, whom I cannot credit because I forgot his name, wrote that hardly any Liverpool players would start for the Rossoneri - this was more down to them than to the Reds, who recited to near perfection their karma of pressure, pressure, pressure, and forced Milan at least ten yards deeper than Ancelotti's team likes to operate.
If you go back to Kaka's opening goal against Manchester United, Alessandro Nesta had sent in a long, high ball to Clarence Seedorf only a few yards short of the halfway line. That meant no Man United player had covered the pitch fast enough to close him down. Milan defenders did not enjoy a similar amount of time on the ball on Wednesday night, which obviously forced the midfielders to come and fetch it or risk being cut off, as Seedorf and Kaka were for most of the first half. But this, again, meant their opponents could reorganize and react to actually take the initiative, as they'd shown right before Inzaghi's opening goal.
In the second half, wary of Liverpool's powers of recovery and having been stretched a couple of times, notably Steven Gerrard's effort which Dida blocked, Milan tried to increase possession but actually held the ball, as final stats prove, less than they had in the first half.
They did little to show they were the superior team and rarely had an answer for Jermaine Pennant, who'd already shown flashes of his menace in the first half, troubling Marek Jankulovski. Only some moments of exquisite ball control in tight spaces by Pirlo and Seedorf gave them a breather, but the perfect positioning by most Liverpool midfielders on the night, most notably Javier Mascherano and Xabi Alonso, meant the stream of passes which usually go Seedorf and Kaka's way was varied and Milan gave away the ball, or hit passes off target, more then they customarily do.
Liverpool's graft and hard running matched Milan's superior movement without the ball, and at one point it seemed this confrontation between two vastly different sides was going to be decided by Inzaghi's fluke of a goal, which would have been a shame.
Thankfully for the post mortems - but not for Liverpool, of course - Benitez's decision to take off Mascherano and bring on Peter Crouch (an obvious one with 12 minutes to go, so no criticism of the Spanish coach here) upset Liverpool's shape in midfield, and it was Kaka', free for once from the shackles of a man who'd twice run him down on one of the Brazilian's dangerous forward runs, who had time and space to slot the ball down the inside right channel for Inzaghi to score.
It was the end of an extraordinary season for Milan. They will talk about their points deduction in the Serie A and UEFA's reluctance to admit them to the Champions League as a proof it was a case of them against the world, but this sounds awkward from one of the superpowers of world football.
GettyImages
Inter Milan's win in Italy gave their rivals some added incentive.
Sometimes, in team sports, the feeling everyone is out to get you can light the flames of competitiveness much more than mere determination can and, in Milan's case, one can add the fact their next-door neighbours Inter ran away with the Italian Scudetto and beat them twice in the league.
Milan's triumph will now surely overshadow Inter's accomplishment, and a vociferous minority of red-and-black clad young men left bystanders in no doubt about their feelings. They ran out of Athens' OAKA Stadium in a conga line, jumping around and singing derogatory songs about Inter.
But they were not Milan fans. They were most of the Milan squad, including the joyful Kaka, Dida, for once smiling, Brocchi (a former Inter player, by the way). By performing this dance and singing aloud, they also found a choreographic excuse to go past the waiting line of journalists and - astonishingly - several fans who had waded into the mixed zone, and that was as cunning a tactical ploy as had been on shown on the pitch.
He does. He's just so badger-esque