It might not have been his best performance when it comes to the eye test, but the scoreboard reads that AC Milan won 3-0 and Olivier Giroud scored an important goal against Empoli.
As La Gazzetta dello Sport (seen below) recalls, Giroud in his life scored at Wembley, Anfield and Old Trafford but also at the Francis-Le Blé in Brest, at the MKM Stadium in Hull and at the ETO Stadion in Győr.
The Stadio Carlo Castellani was missing from his list, and he potentially fixed that in his last chance to do so. After Ruben Loftus-Cheek’s shot was blocked by Maleh’s fingers, the Frenchman put the ball on the spot and found the top corner via the crossbar.
Giroud didn’t do much else in the match but, with that penalty, he reached double figures for the season: nine goals in the league, one in the Champions League. Since 2010, when he started playing in the ‘top five’ leagues, he has always done this.
That means he has 14 seasons out of 14 with at least 10 goals across spells at Montpellier, Arsenal, Chelsea and of course Milan. Among the players still competing in the five top European leagues, no one else has done this.
Giroud is second among the scorers in Serie A for 2023-24, behind Lautaro Martinez, and second in terms of away goals too. If in the year of the Scudetto he became a bit of a legend for his goals at San Siro, in the current campaign he enjoys scoring away from home comforts.
He has so far bagged in Rome, Naples, Lecce, Bergamo and now Empoli. It’s partly random, partly perhaps not: away from home, where Milan struggle, Giroud serves more. As for penalties, in Serie A for Milan he is on nine out of nine.
The 37-year-old, who usually leads the line in important matches, must have thought about the shadow of Luka Jovic yesterday and that might well explain the aggressive celebration which was almost an outpouring of anger and relief.
The life of a striker is strange. He lives for goals and when he doesn’t get them he blames himself, which means that there will have been a lot of pent up frustration given he hadn’t scored for almost a month – 9 December, against Atalanta – and he must have felt a bit of pressure.
He now has competition from Jovic, which he never had with Divock Origi in truth. Some Milan fans yesterday wanted the Serbian to start after his display in midweek, yet Giroud got the nod and did what was asked.
It could be his last season at Milan, it is almost certainly his last as the starting No.9, but no one is thinking about this now. Giroud now plays a little, rests a little, and it can only be good for him, considering that in the last few games he has seemed tired.
On Wednesday against Atalanta he will almost certainly start on the bench and will return to the starting line-up for the game Roma. Looking up, he can already see the next away matches on the horizon: Udinese and Frosinone, where he has never scored.
