AC Milan are floating in seventh European-Cup heaven after beating Liverpool 2-1 in the Champions League final Wednesday.
"Hurray!!!!!!!" shouted the front of Milan-based sports daily Gazzetta dello Sport Thursday, with an exclamation mark for each of Milan's seven European Cup-Champions League wins.
"Campionissimi" (Great Champions) read the front-page headline of Corriere dello Sport.
The Italian media toasted veteran striker Filippo Inzaghi for scoring the two goals that enabled Milan to avenge the 2005 Istanbul Champions League final defeat, when the Serie A giants lost to Liverpool on penalties after leading 3-0 at half time.
"Euro-delirium with Inzaghi, It's Rossoneri Revenge," declared a Gazzetta dello Sport headline.
"This victory evens up the Istanbul defeat, which was weighing us down," said Milan Chairman and former premier Silvio Berlusconi, who has won his fifth European Cup since taking over the club in 1986.
"Once again we have shown that we are the best team in Europe of the last 20 years".
Berlusconi stressed that the triumph was also a boost for Italian soccer, following last summer's Calciopoli referee-rigging scandal and the death of a policeman at rioting at a top-flight match in February.
Italy and Milan midfielder Gennaro Gattuso agreed:
"This victory goes in the face of those who said Italian football was in crisis. In a year we have won the World Cup with the Azzurri and now the Champions League.
"The Istanbul defeat will be there forever but Liverpool are crying this time, like we were two years ago".
Pundits said that Carlo Ancelotti's second Champions League trophy puts him alongside former great Milan coaches Arrigo Sacchi and Fabio Capello.
Ancelotti believes it was Milan's "destiny to win this game after what happened two years ago".
He said his team deserved the victory for the way they came through a series of difficulties this season.
Milan's pre-season preparations were disrupted when the club was ordered to play the preliminary stages of the Champions League, rather than enter the tournament at the group stage, as part of their Calciopoli penalty.
They also suffered a high number of injuries - at one stage 10 players were in sick bay - and a slump in form in the first half of the season that saw them languishing in the bottom half of the Serie A table.
At one stage, Ancelotti described reaching the Champions League final as "wishful thinking".
Milan are now just two behind Real Madrid's European Cup haul of nine.
The Athens win means they have equalled Argentine club Boca Juniors's world record for the number of international cups in their cabinet - 16.
As well as the seven European Cups, Milan have also won two European Cup Winners Cups, four European Supercups and three Intercontinental Cups.
They will have the chance to pull ahead of Boca Juniors when they play UEFA Cup winners Sevilla for the European Supercup in August and bid for the FIFA Club World Cup - the new name for the Intercontinental Cup - in December.
Captain Paolo Maldini, who has won his fifth European Cup on the verge of 39 - his birthday is June 28 - said he is still hungry for more glory after recently agreeing to play on another year.
"The photo of me lifting the Cup will not be the image that closes my career," he said.
"I want to play another Italian championship and a Champions League. Then there is the European Supercup and the Intercontinental Cup, which I have lost the last three times I have played for it and really want to win this time".
Italian TV pundits praised Liverpool for making Milan sweat all the way on Wednesday.
But newspaper commentators berated Liverpool coach Rafael Benitez for being too cautious.
"Benitez left out the only two real strikers he had, (Peter) Crouch and (Craig) Bellamy, and played (Dirk) Kuyt, who had not scored in 12 Champions League games but has the virtue of covering every space and being the extra man," wrote Mario Sconcerti in Corriere della Sera.
"This was Liverpool - a mass of extra men where the ball was being played, but no one to put it away".
