As La Gazzetta dello Sport (seen below) report this morning, Pioli gave Leao some rest on Wednesday against Cagliari so as not to waste his energy, which is decisive in a match like today’s and then for Wednesday against Borussia Dortmund in the Champions League.
Pioli himself defended Leao in his press conference after he drew some criticism following the chance he missed in the Champions League against Newcastle United.
“Does he make me angry with some attitudes? If someone misses a pass in Cagliari he doesn’t mean that he took a match lightly. Obviously someone like Leao must make as few mistakes as possible.”
This year, in the home debut against Torino, he sent Theo Hernandez through on goal and he scored the winning goal against Verona, so the Portuguese winger has certainly been decisive.
This evening he faces ‘A battle of 10s’ with Luis Alberto who has been impressive for Lazio, but among forwards Leao has better numbers than his colleagues in the department.
He creates twice as many chances per game on average and dribbles almost three times more than the others. He participates in the development of the game, with an average of positive passes that is again higher than the average values of the other forwards.
Speaking of Rafa’s great numbers, there is another ambitious target within reach: he has 46 Rossoneri goals with not even one from a penalty, and the 50th is close.
Today Leao is 37th among the Milan’s all-time top scorers and he will enter the top 30 when he crosses the finish line of 56, which is held by another No.10 who wore braids: Ruud Gullit.
Ruud reached his goal tally in 171 games. Rafa, this evening, will equal the number of appearances: he is at 170 and at 18:00 he will reach 171.
With experience Leao has become more and more of a team man. On social media he complimented Noah Okafor and yesterday his former team-mate Messias, who scored against Roma for Genoa.
Even his words to GQ Portugal were leader-like: “I’m sure that Milan will soon return to winning the Champions League, which is our goal.
“We are young, but we also have many matches between league and cup. We can take this experience and the freshness of the boys to achieve our goals.”
