AC Milan will be welcoming Napoli to San Siro on Wednesday night for the biggest game of the season so far as it is a Champions League quarter-final first leg.
Having so recently surprisingly beaten the runaway Serie A leaders 4-0, Napoli will have revenge at the top of their agenda. You can read our preview of the game here, while below you can find the best stats ahead of the match…
➤ This will be the first meeting between Milan and Napoli in European competition. Milan have only lost one of their nine all-Italian matchups in Europe (W4 D4), while Napoli have one win and one defeat against fellow Italian clubs outside of domestic football.
➤ Milan have won just one of their last nine home games against Napoli in all competitions (D3 L5), with that victory coming in the Coppa Italia quarter final in 2018-19. Indeed, Napoli have won each of their last three away games against Milan (all in Serie A), including a 2-1 victory earlier this season.
➤ Napoli have won each of their last three away matches against AC Milan, their best ever such run against them. Nonetheless, Napoli have failed to win any of their last five away games against Milan in cup competitions (D2 L3).
➤ Milan have reached the quarter-final stage of the UEFA Champions League for the first time since 2011-12 when they were eliminated by Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona. They last went beyond the quarter-finals in 2006-07 when they last won the competition.
➤ Napoli have reached the quarter-final stage of the European Cup/Champions League for the first time in their history. They were eliminated by Arsenal in their last European quarter-final appearance in the 2018-19 UEFA Europa League.
➤ Milan have stopped the opposition from scoring in each of their last four matches in the UEFA Champions League. They last recorded five or more consecutive clean sheets in Europe during the 2004-05 campaign, when they eventually finished as runners-up to Liverpool.
➤ Napoli are the top scorers in this season’s UEFA Champions League with 25 goals, while only FC Bayern München (8) have won more matches in the competition this term (7). Their average of 3.1 goals per game is currently the fifth-best in a single campaign, after Bayern in 2019-20 (3.9), PSG in 2017-18 (3.4), Real Madrid in 2013-14 (3.2) and Liverpool in 2017-18 (3.2).
➤ Milan have won just three of their most recent 16 knockout stage matches in the UEFA Champions League (D4 L9), failing to score in 10 of those 16 matches (63%). Milan lost six of their 37 knockout matches in the competition between 1992-93 and 2006-07, while they have lost nine of 16 since 2007-08.
➤ Napoli have four joint-top scorers in the UEFA Champions League this term: Victor Osimhen, Piotr Zielinski, Giovanni Simeone and Giacomo Raspadori (4). The last Italian side with as many different players scoring 4+ goals in a single edition was 2002-03 finalists Juventus (Del Piero, Nedved, Di Vaio and Trézéguet).
➤ Olivier Giroud has scored four goals in the UEFA Champions League this season for AC Milan – the last player to score 5+ goals in a single edition of the competition for the club was Zlatan Ibrahimovic in 2011-12 (5).
