Roma must be getting sick of the sight of Olivier Giroud, as he was once again decisive during AC Milan’s 3-1 victory at San Siro last night.
La Gazzetta dello Sport (seen below) writes that while Gerry Cardinale was applauding in the stands last night he must have been wondering once again why finding a new striker is such a complicated job.
Elegant, effective and tactically intelligent players like Giroud are hard to find, especially when they are a flesh and blood denial of the laws of physics because the older he gets, the more he continues to score.
Zlatan Ibrahimovic, a similar age-defying performer who now pushes his former team-mates into the role of advisor for the ownership, knows something about that and appreciates the qualities of the Frenchman.
Like Ibra, Giroud is also a man for all seasons: he scores against the lower-ranking sides but more importantly he almost never disappoints on the nights that count. Against Roma he contributed to two goals and won the long-distance duel with Romelu Lukaku by a landslide.
Against Empoli, the 37-year-old made it double figures for the season (across all competitions) for the 14th year in a row, and yesterday he scored his 10th goal in Serie A in 2023-24.
Giroud has done this for three seasons in a row at Milan, but it hasn’t happened at the club for 13 years: the last to achieve it was Pato between 2008-09 and 2010-11. The Brazilian, however, was 22 years old at the time and had a future ahead of him.
At 37 years of age, Oli has already given a lot but is not stopping. He will talk about the future with the club later, but in the present he is decisive. Even with assists, as we saw for the backheel that put Theo Hernandez in behind to make it 3-1.
Yesterday’s assist is his sixth in the current season: since he has been playing in the ‘top five’ European leagues, Giroud only had this many in 2015-16 with the Arsenal shirt. There is half the season still to play.
For Luka Jovic, left on the bench, the chase towards the starting place of Milan could go on forever: how do you take the spot from such an inspired Giroud?
Meanwhile, it must be remembered that Giroud joined the Rossoneri as deputy to Ibrahimovic and won a league title as a protagonist. They placed Divock Origi alongside him and he took Milan’s entire attack on his shoulders, pushing them all the way to the Champions League semi-finals.
With Jovic, this year, for a few moments it seemed like a real battle for a starting spot, but then Giroud started scoring again to set up this lead too.
