AC Milan
The club
Associazione Calcio Milan, known as AC Milan or simply Milan, were founded on 18 December 1899 by the English expatriate Herbert Kilpin as the Milan Foot-Ball and Cricket Club. The club deliberately kept the English spelling of the city's name rather than the Italian "Milano," a nod to its English origins that survives in the name today. Kilpin is said to have described his vision for the new club's colours as "a team of devils. Our colours will be red like fire and black like the fear we will invoke in our opponents," though the exact wording of this often-quoted line was not confirmed from the sources read here.
AC Milan is not the same club as Internazionale Milano, known as Inter Milan, their fellow Serie A club and fiercest rival, with whom they contest the Derby della Madonnina. The clubs share a common root: a group of members split from Milan in 1908 over the club's exclusion of foreign players and formed Internazionale as a rival. The two clubs have shared the same home ground, San Siro (officially the Stadio Giuseppe Meazza), since 1947. The stadium, privately built for the club by president Piero Pirelli, opened in 1926 and now holds 75,817. Milan play in the red and black striped shirts that give the team its nickname, the Rossoneri.
The head coach is the Portuguese Ruben Amorim, appointed in June 2026 after the club restructured its football operations. He succeeded Massimiliano Allegri, who had been in charge through the 2025/26 season. Ownership sits with RedBird Capital Partners, who acquired the club on 1 June 2022 for a reported $1.3 billion, with the previous majority owner, the American hedge fund Elliott Management Corporation, retaining a minority stake. Elliott had itself taken control in July 2018 after the Chinese businessman Li Yonghong defaulted on loan repayments used to buy the club.
Recent seasons
AC Milan won the Serie A title in 2021/22, their nineteenth league championship and first since 2010/11. In 2025/26, under Massimiliano Allegri, they finished fifth in Serie A on 70 points from 20 wins, 10 draws and 8 losses, and went out of the Coppa Italia in the round of sixteen. That fifth-place finish meant no participation in the Champions League, Europa League or Conference League that season. Domestic league placements for the seasons in between 2021/22 and 2025/26 were not established from the sources read here.
Honours and landmarks
AC Milan have won the Serie A title 19 times, most recently in 2021/22, with earlier championships in 1901, 1906, 1907, 1950/51, 1954/55, 1956/57, 1958/59, 1961/62, 1967/68, 1978/79, 1987/88, 1991/92, 1992/93, 1993/94, 1995/96, 1998/99, 2003/04 and 2010/11. They have won the Coppa Italia five times, in 1966/67, 1971/72, 1972/73, 1976/77 and 2002/03, and the Supercoppa Italiana eight times, though the individual years were not established from the sources read here.
Internationally, Milan have won the European Cup or UEFA Champions League seven times, a total bettered only by Real Madrid: 1963 (beating Benfica 2-1), 1969 (beating Ajax 4-1), 1988/89 (beating Steaua București 4-0), 1989/90 (beating Benfica 1-0), 1993/94 (beating Barcelona 4-0), 2002/03 (beating Juventus on penalties after a 0-0 draw) and 2006/07 (beating Liverpool 2-1). They also won the Cup Winners' Cup twice, in 1968 (beating Hamburger SV 2-0) and 1973 (beating Leeds United 1-0), the UEFA Super Cup five times (1989, 1990, 1994, 2003 and 2007), and the Intercontinental Cup or FIFA Club World Cup four times: 1969 (beating Estudiantes 4-2 on aggregate), 1989 (beating Atlético Nacional 1-0), 1990 (beating Olimpia Asunción 3-0) and 2007 (beating Boca Juniors 4-2). The 1988-90 team built around Ruud Gullit, Marco van Basten and Frank Rijkaard under owner Silvio Berlusconi, who bought the club on 20 February 1986, became known as "the Immortals" and won back-to-back European Cups without losing a match in either campaign.
Notable scorelines
Milan's record Serie A win is 9-0 at home to Palermo on 18 February 1951, and their biggest away league win is 8-0 at Genoa on 5 June 1955. In Europe, their record win is 8-0 at home to Union Luxembourg on 12 September 1962, backed up by a 6-0 win in the away leg a week later; they also beat Copenhagen 6-0 away in the 1993/94 Champions League. Milan's heaviest home defeat came in the club's early history, 0-8 to Bologna on 5 November 1922, and their heaviest Serie A home defeat in the modern era is 1-6 to Juventus on 6 April 1997. They have also lost 0-5 away to Roma (3 May 1998) and 0-5 away to Atalanta (22 December 2019) in Serie A, and 0-6 away to Ajax in the 1974 European Super Cup.
The best-remembered scoreline of the modern era may be a defeat rather than a win: the 2005 Champions League final in Istanbul, in which Milan led Liverpool 3-0 at half-time before conceding three goals in six second-half minutes and eventually losing on penalties after a 3-3 draw, widely rated one of the greatest finals in the competition's history.
European record
Milan's seven European Cup and Champions League triumphs came in 1963, 1969, 1988/89, 1989/90, 1993/94, 2002/03 and 2006/07, interspersed with runner-up finishes including the 2004/05 final lost to Liverpool on penalties in Istanbul and the 1995 final lost to Ajax. Beyond the Champions League, the club's two Cup Winners' Cups (1968, 1973), five UEFA Super Cups and four Intercontinental Cup/Club World Cup wins round out a European and world honours list matched by very few clubs. Detailed match-by-match European results outside of these headline finals and record scorelines were not established from the sources read here.
Quotes
Herbert Kilpin, the club's English founder, is widely quoted as having said of the new club's colours: "We will be a team of devils. Our colours will be red like fire and black like the fear we will invoke in our opponents." The precise sourcing and original wording of this quote were not confirmed from the sources read here. No further directly attributed quotations were confirmed from the sources read here.
Right now (2026/27)
Ruben Amorim is the head coach, having taken over from Massimiliano Allegri in June 2026. As of 14 September 2026, Milan sit sixth in Serie A with 8 points from four matches, two wins and two draws, having scored 7 goals and conceded 4; their biggest win so far is 2-0 away at Venezia on 28 August 2026. In the transfer market they brought in Gonçalo Ramos from Paris Saint-Germain for a reported €74 million, Diego Moreira from Strasbourg for around €45 million, and Luka Modrić on a free transfer from Real Madrid, while Rafael Leão left for Galatasaray for around €38 million and Ismaël Bennacer moved on a free transfer to Al-Gharafa.
Milan's route into the 2026/27 UEFA Europa League was through their Serie A finish rather than a play-off: fifth place in the 2025/26 table earned direct entry to the league phase, since Italy's Coppa Italia winners that season, Inter Milan, had already secured a Champions League place, which passed the cup's Europa League berth down to the sixth-placed Serie A finisher, Juventus, leaving Milan's own league-phase spot from fifth position intact. Milan therefore go into the competition seeded in Pot 1 of the 36-team league phase, with the league phase beginning on 16 September 2026; because UEFA's rules keep clubs from the same association apart in this phase, Milan and Juventus, the two Italian entrants, cannot meet each other in it. No 2026/27 Europa League match had been completed at the point these sources were read.
Sources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AC_Milan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026%E2%80%9327_AC_Milan_season https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025%E2%80%9326_AC_Milan_season https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_AC_Milan_records_and_statistics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AC_Milan_in_international_football https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025%E2%80%9326_Serie_A https://www.cbssports.com/soccer/news/ac-milan-ruben-amorim-head-coach-usmnt-manager-mauricio-pochettino/
Researched and written for not4quarters. Where a fact could not be established from the sources read, this page says so rather than guessing.