The Absolute Slog of Digging Up City vs Milan History
You know how it is, sometimes you just get stuck on a topic and can’t let go. This whole thing started because I was arguing with my neighbor, Dave, about who had the bigger financial shift in the last twenty years. Dave, bless his heart, only looks at shiny silverware. I told him he needed context. You can’t just look at City now; you gotta look at what they were doing when Milan was basically running European football back in the day.
So, the only way to settle this dumb argument was to find the actual head-to-head stats. But here’s the kicker: these two teams haven’t exactly been in the same major competition bracket very often, especially before the Abu Dhabi money rolled in for City. This wasn’t going to be a quick check on Wikipedia. This was a proper historical dive. I committed myself to the search, starting late Friday night, figuring I’d find maybe three games, max.
I started pulling data the old-fashioned way. I went through old forum archives, specifically Italian ones, which was a total nightmare because my Italian is terrible and Google Translate just makes things sound like ancient prophecies. I cross-referenced anything that looked like a result with English fan sites dedicated to City’s pre-Premier League era. It was a massive manual effort, just trying to verify if some random 1980s summer tournament result was actually real or just some rumor on a message board.
What I ended up with was a messy, disorganized Excel sheet that took me until Sunday morning to clean up. But when I finally aggregated the verified data—including friendlies, minor cup appearances, and those weird mid-season exhibition games they used to have—I found things that honestly bounced me off the walls. I had expected maybe six total meetings. The real number was substantially higher. And that’s where the truly bizarre stats emerged.
Fact One: The Pre-European Cup Scramble
I was so focused on the modern era that I completely missed how often these two ran into each other in the late 60s and early 70s. We’re talking about forgotten summer cup competitions in North America and even some weird Anglo-Italian League thing. People always think their rivalry is minimal, but historically, they’ve been paired up in these exhibition series way more than they should have been. I discovered three games in the US alone that nobody ever talks about. Why? They were basically glorified training runs, but they count! It completely changes the H2H narrative from “rare fixture” to “historic annoyance.”
Fact Two: The Goal Difference Lie
This is the stat that completely threw Dave off when I showed him. In the competitive matches (meaning, non-friendlies where they were actually trying), City rarely won, especially early on. Milan usually dominated. But here’s the shocker: despite losing more often, City actually has a better overall goal difference in the total historical record. How? Because when City won, they tended to absolutely hammer Milan, often scoring four or five goals in those summer tournaments. They’d win 5-1 one day, lose 1-0 the next. The Milan wins were often tight 1-0 or 2-1 affairs, but those big City wins skewed the aggregate terribly. It proved that when City decided to show up, they really showed up, even if it was just for a meaningless cup.
Fact Three: The Forgotten Shared Manager
We all talk about the famous players who crossed the divide, but I uncovered a manager who spent time at both clubs during incredibly distinct and confusing eras. I won’t name him here, but trust me, he was a massive flop at one club and a cult hero at the other, but the timing was bizarre. He managed Milan just before their first big European resurgence, and then years later, he was managing City when they were stuck in the old Second Division. The fact that the same guy tried to implement his strange defensive tactics at both these football giants, separated by a decade and a massive difference in quality, is genuinely shocking. Nobody remembers this because his tenure at City was so short and disastrous, but the link exists.
Fact Four: The Post-Match Meal Debacle
Okay, this one is pure anecdote, but it was noted in an old match report I found buried in a library archive. There was a specific match in the late 70s where City won unexpectedly. The report didn’t focus on the football much, but it detailed the immediate fallout: the Milan players absolutely refused to eat the post-match meal provided by the hosts because they claimed the catering was a disgrace. They apparently ordered out for pizza instead. It’s not a stat, sure, but it revealed the culture clash back then. Milan, the European aristocrats, were playing against the rough English side, and they were more bothered by the bad food than the loss. That just summarizes the difference in pedigree at the time.
After all this digging, I closed the file and sent the summary to Dave. He had nothing to say, the data was solid. It was a tedious project, but that’s the joy of this stuff, right? Finding the hidden histories nobody else bothers to look for.
My eyes are still burning from staring at those low-res scans. I actually missed my kid’s soccer practice because I was trying to verify the attendance figure for that pizza match. I scrambled to make it up to him later. Honestly, sometimes I get too deep into the rabbit hole. But hey, it keeps the mind sharp, and now I have ammo for the next time someone tries to talk about European history without the proper context. Next up, maybe I’ll try to figure out how many times Chelsea played Monaco before the Champions League era. Wish me luck. I’m going to need it.