The gold jersey that Milan never wore

On July 21, 1999, San Siro was polished to perfection. Silvio Berlusconi had promised a grand celebration. On that day, Milan kicked off the festivities for the centenary season. For the occasion, entrance to the stadium was free. The club presented its fans with a new anthem, an updated version of the song commissioned in 1987 by Berlusconi to his friend Tony Renis, where a choir sings in unison to heroic music: «Milan Milan, solo con te, Milan Milan sempre con te». During the evening, old club legends took to the field to greet the fans while Eugene Cernan, a former NASA astronaut and the last man to walk on the Moon on December 14, 1972, accompanied the coach at the time, Alberto Zaccheroni, on a tour of the field, metaphorically guiding the same spacecraft he had piloted on the Moon. It was a night where the glorious past of the club merged with the present of that time and what was expected to be a bright future. A concept embodied by Andriy Shevchenko.

At that time, the Ukrainian was 23 years old and was the rising star of world football; the Rossoneri snatched him from other top European clubs, paying around 26 million dollars. He was introduced in grand style, with Milan players introduced one by one like wrestlers, and he was the last to descend the steps from the central stand of San Siro to the pitch. Shevchenko was the future of Milan, and on his chest, he wore the majesty of the present, that is, the Tricolore, symbol of the Scudetto won by Milan in the previous season.

The Scudetto was sewn on a shirt that celebrated the past, a kit with thin vertical red and black stripes in homage to the club's first historic kit from 1899. That evening, there was also an exhibition match, a 15-minute per half game where a team wearing the centenary Rossonero jersey faced a team in the second kit made by Milan to celebrate the centenary, a gold shirt with black inserts and details, accompanied by shorts and socks of the same color.  That quick exhibition would be the first and only occasion that Milan fans would see that jersey at San Siro. Milan never wore it in any official matches that season across Serie A, the Champions League, and the Coppa Italia. The shirt would only see the field in two other fleeting occasions, both during pre-season.

The first time in a friendly match against Bayer Leverkusen, and the second, also in a friendly, on September 1, 1999, against Real Sociedad in Catania. Curiously, a few years later, Milan, for the 2004/05 season, tried to reintroduce a gold jersey, which, by a strange twist of fate, like the 1999/00 season shirt, carried the Scudetto on its chest and, like the 1999/00 version, was never used in official matches. As in other similar situations, there is no real reason why Milan never wore those jerseys. They belong to an era when Third jerseys were not yet so prevalent in football aesthetics. There was a strong focus on using home and away jerseys, matching shorts and socks borrowed from one of the two kits. The idea of using a third jersey for home games was never even considered. That’s why these two gold shirts were never actually seen on the field. Instead, they became cult items, a sort of Holy Grail among fans and enthusiasts. Hard-to-find shirts that live only in the memory of collectors and nostalgics on social media. In the years that followed, the only gold shirt that Milan would use in official matches was the one adidas made for the 2013/14 season, which for years would be associated with the Rossoneri's last participation in the Champions League before their return to Europe’s top competition in 2021.