IT should be the jewel in Italian football's crown. Less than ten months after Italy's national side were crowned World Cup winners, AC Milan stand just 90 minutes away from their club's seventh European title.

Victory over Liverpool in this evening's Champions League final would cement Italy's status as the current powerhouse of the global game.

After everything that has been happening in the last 12 months, however, it would still be insufficient to remove the stains that continue to discolour Italian football.

Lest we forget, the motherland of the world and potentially European champions is also home to a culture of violence and illegality that has turned many supporters off football for life.

The memory of February's violent clashes in Sicily that led to the death of a policeman continues to loom large.

Stadiums that would not have looked out of place in the 1950s regularly play host to running battles involving gangs of hardened ultras and, as supporters of Manchester United can attest, the nation's police force tends to view all football fans as a legitimate target for attack.

To make matters worse, last summer's 'Calciopoli', or match-fixing, scandal remains the backdrop to everything that has happened this season.

Exposed as rotten to the core, the Italian game has eschewed the opportunity of a thorough cleansing to indulge itself in a bizarre self-denial that appears to have been tolerated and even encouraged by the wider footballing world.

Juventus, relegated to Serie B after their former general manager, Luciano Moggi, was found guilty of systematic match-fixing, have been lauded as returning heroes following their subsequent promotion.

Fiorentina and Lazio, docked a combined total of 18 points for their part in the scandal, have been praised to the rafters as they have shrugged off their handicap to finish in Serie A's top five.

And perhaps most gallingly of all, AC Milan, a club who were proved to be complicit in the corrupt dealings of the Italian FA's referee selectors, have been hailed as worthy European champions-in-waiting ahead of this evening's showpiece finale with Liverpool.

True, Milan's semi-final performance against Manchester United was arguably the most impressive European display of the season and, in Brazilian midfielder Kaka, the 'Rossonieri' boast the one player who can give Cristiano Ronaldo a run for his money in the race to be crowned World Footballer of the Year.

But the undoubted quality of Carlo Ancelotti's side cannot sufficiently compensate for one unpalatable fact - AC Milan should not even have been in the Champions League in the first place.

Originally docked 44 points for their part in the Calciopoli scandal, Milan's fine was reduced to 30 points on appeal, an act that meant they scraped into Italy's third Champions League qualification place by a solitary point.

Co-incidental? Hardly. But while the UEFA hierarchy grumbled that Milan, like Juventus, should have been barred from the competition, the organisation's rulebook meant they were powerless to intervene.

The rules have now been changed and UEFA will now be able to exclude a team who have been found guilty of match-fixing or massaging results.

To some, an Italian victory will right the wrongs of 2005's heart-breaking penalty shoot-out defeat to Liverpool.

To most football supporters, however, a Milanese success would represent the biggest miscarriage of justice since the so-called 'Golden Fix' of 34 years ago.

Back then, Juventus bribed a referee to help them defeat Brian Clough's Derby County in the European Cup final. When it comes to Italian football, it seems, some things never change