Disaster struck for AC Milan in Croatia as they were beaten 2-1 on the night by Dinamo Zagreb and surrendered a place in the top eight of the Champions League in the process.
Martin Baturina and Marko Pjaca got the goals for the home team either side of Christian Pulisic’s equaliser, and Yunus Musah also saw red in what was a nightmare at the Stadion Maksimir.
The result means that Milan dropped from sixth in the table before a ball was kicked to 13th, and now a potentially tricky play-off tie is on the cards in February.
Who Milan will face
As we outlined earlier today, there will be no open draw for the play-off round but rather Milan will face one of the two unseeded teams.
The possible opponents until Atalanta’s late equaliser against Barcelona were Manchester City or Celtic. Now, however, a game against either Juventus or Feyenoord awaits in the next round.
Then, if the Rossoneri were to get through that particular stage, they would play either Arsenal or Inter. In short, they have made lives very difficult for themselves.
A reminder of the dates from here:
➤ Knockout phase play-offs: 11/12 & 18/19 February 2025
➤ Round of 16: 4/5 & 11/12 March 2025
➤ Quarter-finals: 8/9 & 15/16 April 2025
➤ Semi-finals: 29/30 April & 6/7 May 2025
➤ Final: 31 May 2025
This is blessing. People will stop paying for overpriced tickets of Cardinale ac milan, and we can stop watching this.
Next season without Europe will be boring, so cardinale can watch on big screen by himself.
Yeah that ’s what we want. We want Serie B. Just to smoke Cardinales ass. Yes and then C. That’ll show him! And then we can hope we go bankrupt and dissolve the club so we don’t have to watch Milan ever again. That’ll show them mericans how things are done!
Stop exaggerating. Milanelo has a point. Cardinale might be forced to sell without CL.
For one season?! Of course not, his gamble is being able to raise the value of the asset with a new stadium built. A season without Champions League will slash funding and make that brand harder to establish, but he’s not going to sell off without gambling more on being able to get back there and it being a blip. This weird hope that he sells is more likely to be based on success than failure, because if failure forces Redbird to sell then it’s going to take a lot more over the next few years.
Back on topic… Feyenoord. Good one, can see the Giminez hat trick for them now.
“Cardinale might be forced to sell without CL.”
LOL. Nope. It’s not how it’d go.
Well sometimes you get what you deserve!
Perhaps its better not to be through to last 16, we are not ready and would get smoked.
So we have a game to win against lesser opposition which at least means we hopefully are not disgraced and if we win may boost some confidence.
We not ready for last 16 so lets practice
Put Juve in the same bracket as Inter.
Hope they draw PSV.
Theen Milan can play Feyenoord and then Arsenal.
Oh joy…..
Round of 16 opponent will be decided by another draw after knockout matches, there is no pre-decided bracket of Arsnal or Inter
Not true. The format has changed. Look it up on UEFA’s official site.
Friday’s draw will establish the entire bracket and there will be no other draws.
Friday we learn if our playoff will be against Feyenoord or Juve. We will also learn if we will face next Inter or Arsenal in case we survive the playoff. We will also learn the entire path to the final, should we keep winning (which I doubt, unfortunately).
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Today’s loss in Zagreb may have been a blessing in disguise. Had we won and placed sixth, we’d have faced the surviving team of another cluster, which includes Real, Bayern and ManCity.
Domestic derbies, anything can happen, while I think we would not survive Real, Bayern or ManCity. Even though these haven’t been doing so well, they are starting to peak again.
Conceicao ego will destroy this team..!!
Very dumb comment, the team been fumbling before Conceicao,why his ego? The players are sleeping.
Winning champions league with free transfer and loan player..LoL ..it will remain American Dream. But that’s not the point. The point is selling player with huge profit. No loyal player then there will be no player become legend.
What a joke, we can’t even beat Dinamo Zagreb now. Highest revenue in Serie A 😂
We need to get Feyenoord as I doubt we’ll survive Juve. But that may mean that they won’t sell Gimenez to us.
In any case, if we do survive the playoffs, I really doubt we’d survive Inter or Arsenal.
We’re doomed.
You really think we’d be THAT lucky to land Feyenoord and then Arsenal? LOL. We haven’t had such luck since the scudetto season – if even then.
It’s 10000% sure that the lottery will bring us Juve and then Inter (in theory, as we’ll get demolished by Juve and won’t reach the next round).
Actually it might be crazy but it is better this way, if milan won vs zagreb and finished 6th he would face (city,bayern or madrid) in round of 16.
The coach is not the problem. The owners are the problem.
They sold Tonali and bought £100 million worth of waste like: Musah, LoftusCheek, Okafor, Chukweze, Emerson. In addition, they bought some other deadwoods like Jovic, Tammy Abraham
Our issues Acmilan is suffering right now is we don’t have an attacking midfielder and Acmilan management are not ready to resolve that particular issues. So Acmilan management are all bunch of shame and disgrace they’re all useless.
How Zlatan hyped up Emerson starting to worry me now,We should resign Tonali and spend 50 mil on a proper Striker!!
We can’t win champion league and we may not qualified for next year champion league. We will have allowed fonasca to continue since the management doesn’t have ambition plan
AC Tottenham
It’s a done deal millan stops at round of 16