AC Milan in 1900

Before San Siro, before even the Velodromo, the earliest Milan played on open ground near the Porta Monforte area and then at the Trotter, the horse-trotting field on the northern edge of the city that Italian sources record as one of the club's first true home grounds. These pioneer pitches — often shared, roped-off patches beside race tracks and parade grounds — hosted the first challenge matches and Palla Dapples duels. The rossoneri were a wandering side long before they had a stadium of their own.

Among the most human details Nieri preserves is Kilpin's habit of keeping a flask of whisky hidden behind the goalpost, from which he would take a discreet nip during matches to steady himself against the cold and the exertion. The image — the ageing English captain fortifying himself mid-game on a frozen Lombard pitch — has become one of the most cherished anecdotes of Milan's earliest years. It captures a footballer from an era before diet sheets and sports science, playing on into his thirties out of sheer stubborn love for the game.

Founded on 16 December 1899 by Alfred Edwards, Herbert Kilpin and their fellow pioneers as Milan Foot-Ball and Cricket Club, the rossoneri entered the Italian championship within months of their birth. The debut came on 15 April 1900 in Turin, a 3-0 elimination defeat to FC Torinese, as Genoa marched to a third consecutive title. The same year Milan lifted its first silverware, the Medaglia del Re, a trophy put up by King Umberto I.

Milan played the first match in its history on 11 March 1900 at the Trotter ground, brushing aside city rivals Mediolanum 2-0. Barely a month later, on 15 April 1900, the young club made its debut in the Italian Football Championship, bowing out in the semi-final to Torinese — a first, fleeting taste of national competition that would very soon turn to triumph.

In 1900 the Milan Cricket and Football Club, barely a year old, entered the third edition of the Italian Football Championship, then a knockout tournament spread across a handful of spring Sundays (only the inaugural 1898 edition had been settled in a single day) contested almost entirely among a handful of clubs in and around Turin and Genoa. The Rossoneri were eliminated early against the founding powers of the northern game, but the campaign marked the first time Herbert Kilpin's men measured themselves in official competition. These were matches played before a few hundred spectators on rough pitches, refereed under still-evolving rules, and reported in only a handful of column-inches in the sporting press.

In its very first spring the club lifted the first trophy in its history, the Medaglia del Re (the King's Medal), a tournament struck in honour of King Umberto I of Italy. The run began with a 2-0 win over Mediolanum and ended with another 2-0 victory over Juventus in the final. For the Milan Foot-Ball and Cricket Club, barely months old, it was the first tangible proof that Herbert Kilpin's project could win — a gold medal offered by King Umberto I that Italian chroniclers treat as the true prologue to the club's trophy cabinet, coming even before the first Italian title. It was an early sign that this new club from the Lombard capital had arrived to compete for honours — the first piece of a collection Milan Club Adelaide still celebrates.