Milan · 4 squads

AC Milan Squads

Four squads and eighteen years of the same defender: Sacchi's side, Capello's, and Ancelotti's two — the club that taught European football how to defend.

Squads

Players

Seasons

1988–2006

Best XI

89.9

The club, season by season

The 1988-89 team is where the modern back four is usually dated from: Baresi, Maldini and Tassotti in front of a press nobody had seen before, and Gullit, Van Basten and Rijkaard in front of them. Capello's 1993-94 side took the European Cup with the 4-0 over Barcelona that is still the most one-sided final of the modern era. Ancelotti then won two more, in 2002-03 and 2006-07, around the midfield of Pirlo, Gattuso and Seedorf, with Kaká at 95 in the second of them.

In the draft

Draft Milan and you draft a defence. Maldini appears in all four squads — 1988-89 to 2006-07, which is the widest career span of any player in the database — and Costacurta in three. The attack is the gamble: Van Basten and Kaká are eighteen years apart, so the wheel gives you one great forward and a back line that can hold a lead, or it gives you neither.

Every AC Milan squad below can turn up when you spin the wheel — the highest-rated of them all is Kaká (95), and the best XI these 4 squads could theoretically assemble averages 89.9. You don't get to pick: the wheel decides which squad you draft from, one pick at a time. That is the whole shape of it: you draft your own XI first, then find out what it was worth.