Shadow of ‘The Prophet’ looming large over Champions League final

ROME — Arrigo Sacchi was a revolutionary who came from nowhere to lead a great AC Milan side to back-to-back European Cups in 1989 and 1990.

No coach has achieved that feat since, but Zinedine Zidane will match it if he retains the Champions League trophy with Real Madrid in Saturday’s final against Juventus in Cardiff, Wales.

A recent poll on the website of Corriere dello Sport saw Sacchi’s Milan named as the greatest Italian team of all time by internet users and the second-best side — behind the ‘Grande Torino’ team that dominated in the 1940s before being wiped out in the Superga air disaster — by a panel of 10 coaches.

Sacchi’s team “dominated Europe with a new kind of soccer, comprised of pressing, strength, speed and ideas,” according to the Rome-based sports daily.

Thirty years after Sacchi’s appointment as Milan coach, his precepts no longer seem so revolutionary: a 4-4-2 system with zonal marking, the absence of a sweeper, aggressive and constant pressing, pace, the offside trap, intensive training sessions.

But all that was revolutionary when Milan owner Silvio Berlusconi hired him in 1987, despite Sacchi having never played professionally and having only coached in Serie B with Parma.

In a conservative Italian game where defenses dominated, Berlusconi and Sacchi added a new dimension by introducing a more seductive style. “Win, convince and entertain,” is how Sacchi summed up his Milan team’s outlook.

Nevertheless, the man who would become known as “The Prophet of Fusignano” first of all had to convince those who doubted him largely because he had never played at any notable level.

“I never realized that to become a jockey you needed to be a horse first,” Sacchi joked. But Berlusconi’s support was crucial at the beginning.

The story goes that before an important match at Verona, when the new coach’s methods had yet to convince his squad, Berlusconi made it clear to every Milan player: “Between the team and Sacchi,