Four Years in Hell (or Happy Birthday Milan Obsession)

It’s hard to believe that this blog has lasted four years.  To be fair, we won the scudetto in the first year, and it’s all been downhill from there for Milan. But hopefully not all downhill for those of you who have written guest posts, been podcast guests, post comments, follow and interact on Twitter, and even those of you who just read. You are either masochists or you really like this place, I am not sure. Or maybe you just like hell? But four years in hell sounds exactly perfect for i Diavoli.

"When you are in hell only the devil can save you"

Milan Obsession is unique amongst Milan blogs. Not just because there are creative match previews, reviews, and gameposts with liveblogs for every match. There are also podcasts with guests all over the world who are all devout Milan fans. But also, when we started four years ago, my co-founder Jovan and I were committed to giving fans a different style of writing. Tactics-heavy or stat-heavy pieces are a dime a dozen, and a monkey could write the 5 things about whatever kind of posts. However the writing here is different on purpose, to give people an option. In addition to the posts for each game, there are player profiles, opinion pieces, rants, and creative posts like dream interviews and interactive Mad Libs-style posts, amongst other things. Those of you who read here often have responded very well to all of that uniqueness, so thank you.

Last summer the blog hit over 1 million unique pageviews, a number which is mindboggling to me, especially since traffic slowed down for Milan blogs everywhere when things turned really bad for the team. This post marks the 955th post, and the podcast is two years old now, with 48 podcasts and still going. My photoshop collection grows weekly, and there are even a few videos. With 5100 followers on Twitter, it is humbling to know that so many people are interested in my little obsession. Even more empowering to be a minority in such a male-dominated universe, and despite all of the sexist comments, insults, personal attacks, threats, etc. that unfortunately still exist for a woman in 2015, there are so many of you who are bigger than all that, and accept me without gender bias. Thank you.

So grab a Curva Sud cupcake, and settle in for more obsessed posts, podcasts, photoshops and more. Despite much adversity both in my personal life and also the internet-inflicted adversity, I have no intentions of going anywhere anytime soon. Thanks so much to all of you who have made this past four years so amazing, you are all like my own personal 12th man.With the amazing friends I’ve met here and all of the support people give me, why would I want to be anywhere else? I’m a Milanista in hell, and that’s right where I want to be. Happy Birthday, Milan Obsession!

This post inspired by the music of Altered Images

Our next match is

Milan vs. Empoli

Sunday, February 15 • 12:30 CET (6:30am EST)

(Match preview will be up tomorrow)