In 1996, Baggio came to Hong Kong with AC Milan to play a friendly match against Hong Kong league champion Instant Dict at Hong Kong Stadium, a 40,000-seat stadium, on 7th June.

At first, Milan planned to arrived on 4th June from Changchun, China, unfortunately, the plane had some problems and therefore the whole team arrived at the busy and famous Hong Kong Kai Tak Airport 2 days later, on 6th June.

Although the plane's expected arrival time was 4:00pm, some fans had been waiting since 12:00pm, but they had no idea which gate the team would come out from, so they were walking around. About 4:00, the fans and reporters were waiting out of a gate, while the Milan team appeared from another gate, this caused a bit of mess when the people ran to the gate all at once, but they could only saw the whole team went into the bus within 1 minute and the bus being driven away.

Before they came out, the team was being interviewed, someone asked Baggio what he thought about the Italian national team in Euro '96, Baggio said that Italy had a good chance of winning the European Championship and that he was confident they would do well without him, but the result, I know, you know, all soccer fans know.

In the same day, the team went to the Times Square, one of Hong Kong's biggest shopping mall, to promote the game against Instant Dict. There were about 300 fans around, but because it was too crowd, and the stage was surrounded by a lot of security guards, none of the fans could get close to the soccer heros. The Milan team stayed for about 20 minutes and left.

On 7th June, at first the team decided to practise at Wan Chai stadium, but it was 32 degree celsius, which was too hot, therefore they just went to have a running session at a park near their hotel. Baggio didn't follow the team because he had a minor ear injury, he went to the hospital for a check-up.

Game day. Before the match started, there were still some tickets left for sales, but as the time of the match came closer and closer, more and more tickets were sold. A few minutes before the match began, all tickets were sold, this was the second match which sold all 40,000 tickets after the stadium was rebuilt, the first was the game between Sampdoria and Eastern. The full crowd showed that Baggio was such a popular person, as Milan were without some famous players, such as Baresi, Maldini, Albertini, Boban, Savicevic and Weah, etc., but still could make it a full house.

At 8:00 pm, the match began. Well, it was a one-side game, and it seemed that the match was a Baggio personal show, almost all the people in the stadium were going for Baggio. The first goal was scored by Milan's Caccia after 19 minutes.

In the 25th minute, Sordo's great pass and Baggio's powerful right foot shot became Milan's second goal, it was the greatest moment in the stadium. After the first half, Milan was leading by 2 goals. Roberto seemed to be unlucky in the second half, as he missed some good chances to scored more, the greatest chance was once when he had got pass the goalkeeper, but he fired the ball into the fans, not the net. He was unlucky, but Tomas Locatelli was, who scored four goals in this match, two of which were assisted by Baggio. Finally, Maspero scored Milan's last goal. The result was AC Milan won 7-0, and the Italian Serie A champion received a total of US$70,000 as a bonus.

When the referee whistled the end of the game, about 500 fans went into the field and surrounded Baggio. Roberto didn't know what to do at first, but fortunately, he got help from his teammates after a few minutes so that he could escape. But later he said "I was scared at first when I saw so many fans surrounding me. But I understand it's the fans' way of showing their happiness."

One of the most famous soccer player had gone and AC Milan vs Instant Dict will be in my memory forever.

PauL