AC MilanAC Milan was founded on 16 December 1899 — though historians note the actual founding meeting may have taken place a few days earlier — by English textile trader Herbert Kilpin, who had come to Milan from Nottingham and dreamed of building a club capable of rivalling the era's powerhouses from Turin and Genoa. It was Kilpin who chose the club's distinctive colours, describing red as the symbol of fire and black as the fear the team would instil in opponents — the origin of the club's later "devils" nickname. The club was originally named Milan Foot-Ball and Cricket Club, and its first president was Alfred Edwards, a British vice-consul in Milan.
Just a year and a half later, in May 1901, Milan won its first Italian championship, beating a heavily favoured Genoa 3–0 in the final in Turin — a triumph that ended the winning run of the club that had been Italy's only champion prior to 1901.
Over more than a century, the club has won 19 Italian league titles, the most recent in the 2021–22 season, along with five Coppa Italia triumphs. Above all, however, the Rossoneri are synonymous with European success: they have lifted the European Cup/Champions League seven times (1963, 1969, 1989, 1990, 1994, 2003, 2007), the Cup Winners' Cup twice (1968, 1973), and claimed the world club title four times in total — three Intercontinental Cups (1969, 1989, 1990) and one FIFA Club World Cup (2007). For years, this made Milan the most decorated club in the world in intercontinental competition.
A particularly celebrated period came at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s, when under coaches Arrigo Sacchi and later Fabio Capello, a side built around the Dutch trio of Marco van Basten, Ruud Gullit and Frank Rijkaard won back-to-back European Cups in 1989 and 1990, playing a style of football widely regarded by experts as among the most refined in the history of the sport.
The team plays its home matches at San Siro, built in a record thirteen months on the initiative of then-club president Piero Pirelli and opened on 19 September 1926 with a derby against Inter Milan. The stadium initially belonged solely to Milan, but since 1947 Inter has been a co-tenant, sharing the ground with its city rival to this day — one of the few arrangements of its kind at the top level of European football. In 1980 the stadium was officially renamed Stadio Giuseppe Meazza, honouring the legendary forward who won Italian titles wearing the colours of both Milanese clubs and lifted two World Cups with the Italian national team, in 1934 and 1938.
