AC Milan got their season off the ground with a 2-0 win away against Lecce. It was not the best win, but three points are three points.
Things could have gone so differently for Milan, and this just shows where the Rossoneri have to improve going forward. They scored twice and kept a clean sheet, which is good enough in itself. However, they could have scored a few more, had technology not intervened.
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Ruben Loftus-Cheek bagged a first goal of the season, after looking threatening all evening, and then the Rossoneri got their second through Christian Pulisic, who was forced to miss the first 75 minutes with an ankle issue.
Let’s look at the key stats from the game.
The key stats
Starting with the cliche, the scoreline. Milan won by two goals away from home and never really looked like they were going to concede. There was the occasional half chance, but nothing where you were sitting, going ‘got lucky there’.
What is a bit of a concern, and a known one, is that the Rossoneri had four big chances and only converted twice. Imaginably, one of those will be the Santiago Gimenez 1-on-1. Everyone has stated that they ‘need to be better’. In other words, it is not an underlying fault.
From their 14 shots, of course, the Diavolo scored twice, which works out at around a 14.3% conversion rate, which is not too bad at all, considering the average is between 10-15%. So, the worry may not actually be too great.
That first (third) goal
Milan scored three goals, all awarded initially, on Friday night before they actually, officially, went 1-0 up. Matteo Gabbia was deemed to have made a foul from Luka Modric’s corner, whilst Gimenez scored well from an offside position.
The first goal, then, arrived after Modric played another fantastic set-piece into the box, which Loftus-Cheek nodded in. A great goal, and actually his first since March 30, 2024, something which may be big going forward.
Last night, Loftus-Cheek scored his first goal for #ACMilan since March 30, 2024, when he found the back of the net against Fiorentina. pic.twitter.com/NYdFFBUWbd
— MilanData📊 (@acmilandata) August 30, 2025
Then, the assist was actually made by the oldest player since Opta have started collecting data in Serie A. At 39 years and 354 days old, Modric’s cross is one for the record books, as OptaPaolo states!
A fifth of the way
Then, it is also important to refer back to the method of victory, the Rossoneri kept a big clean sheet away from home. Lecce were always going to sit back and play on the counter, and the visitors did their job well in this respect.
In terms of what it means, it is the first clean sheet the Diavolo have kept away from home since April 27th. As a whole, last season, Milan only kept five clean sheets away from home, so this is a positive step in the right direction.
Better than nothing!
Whilst xG won’t give you a full picture, it did at least show the unlikelihood of Cremonese’s two goals last week (0.21).
This week too, it highlights that we didn’t actually give up many clear chances, despite the ease with which the other team seemed to be able to bypass our midfield on the counter – not surprising when we’ve just decided not to bother with attacking midfielders.
My concern is that we need to be able to make more big chances against a low block still – and this is where coaching has to play a part, unless we have managed to sign players who exclusively can’t learn patterns of play and how to work in tight spaces.
In these tight games, RLC definitely has his place IMO, especially now we actually have a decent dead ball expert again. Maybe that’s starting, maybe it’s off the bench, but we have to learn to adapt to him playing and some of the space that will open behind him. To be fair, Musah did a good helping job of this.
In stat terms, Modric really stands out – passes, pass complete percentage, touches – he features high on all of them (Pavlovic is higher but that was mainly the balls played to Modric or Fofana, so he had fewer ‘key passes’ to bypass a Lecce line).
One other thing that really stands out; on a lot of defensive metrics, Saelemaekers really stood out. Especially playing where he was, backs up his excellent work rate and pressing ability.