When AC Milan review why their title bid faltered, it is hard to look beyond their record against bottom-half teams, especially at home.
As La Gazzetta dello Sport report, Milan tried to cling on as long as they could while Inter won game after game. However, with the gap now 10 points, it seems as though the Scudetto will be black and blue again, even with the derby in less than two weeks.
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Home discomforts
The standings speak for themselves: from 13 away games, the Rossoneri have squeezed out 29 points, without losing a single match (only Bayern Munich can say the same in Europe). At San Siro, 23 points from the other 13 games, not even good enough for top four pace.
Considering only home games, Inter, Napoli, Roma, Atalanta and Juventus are higher. Their two defeats this season both came at San Siro, where the Rossoneri aren’t exactly goal-generators: 18 scored, compared to 23 on the road.
The defence is also faring worse: 11 goals conceded compared to nine away from home. One partial explanation undoubtedly lies in the way they approach lower-ranked opponents, forced to commit too much to try and break the deadlock.
The first signs
Paradoxically, the first dramatic defeat against Cremonese is the least serious of the dark moments. Losing in the first game obviously generates bad thoughts, but there are still 37 opportunities ahead to put things right.
A serious blow to the Rossoneri, if anything, came in October as three draws (Juventus Pisa, Atalanta) and a single win (Fiorentina) inflicted an initial painful setback. From first place, the Rossoneri found themselves in fourth.
The next blow came in January, numerically almost a carbon copy of October: three draws (Genoa, Fiorentina, Roma) and two wins (Cagliari, Lecce). If at the start of 2026, the table said they were second (with a game in hand), by the end of January they were still second, but five points behind Inter.
The reasons
Why did Milan fail to keep pace? The squad construction is one factor, a group with only 19 outfield players (increased to 20 after the winter signing of Niclas Füllkrug). This is too few, even without European football, because injuries and suspensions always happen.
Moreover, some of the reserves, remained unused or unusable for a long time (Athekame, De Winter, Ricci), or were never even considered (Odogu). This is another problem in an already depleted squad, because not even all of the 19 are getting minutes.
Then there’s the obvious handicap of results against bottom-half teams. Being the best team in top-flight head-to-head matches is a huge boost, but it doesn’t matter if you then lose to Cremonese and give four points to Parma, among other bad results.
From there, it’s easy to provide a tactical explanation: Allegri stuck with the 3-5-2 even in circumstances – like against Parma – where switching to a 4-3-3 could have provided more attacking leverage.
That said, this isn’t a Milan build to dominate. Even with Modric and Rabiot this season, the Rossoneri remain fundamentally a transition team, not a ball-playing team. Allegri’s philosophy is to wait and counter-attack, but they may have waited too long.
“That said, this isn’t a Milan build to dominate. ”
FFS, we’re talking about cremoneses, parmas, pisas etc!!!!! If you can’t dominate and score more than 1-2 goals against those miserable team, you don’t deserve to qualify for UCL. Just think how embarrassing it will be to lose all the Romanian, Bulgarian and Austrian teams by 2-3 goals when you can’t even fng beat teams fighting for survival in Serie A!
Hey our Austrian teams are world class.
It’s about skiing, isn’t it? LoL
Well, compared to Allegri’s Milan they are. 🙂
Yeah, wait and counter-attack low block teams LMFAO
Inter is just playing on another level. It would take a very special team to compete at their pace. So we need to consider this when evaluating that gap. They’re on pace to achieve the fourth highest ever points tally in a single season and that’s impressive. Early on in the season I wondered, based on all available performance metrics, why they were so close to the others, even us, but over time it panned out as per those metrics. Last year we’d be on track to compete for the t.itle with this pace, but not this season. It is what it is. I’m ok with best of the rest considering last season but this season isn’t over yet. As few results here and there can change things but we’ll need alot of luck
There are still 12 chances to win or lose. It ain’t over till it’s (mathematically) over.
Inter is showing that this season it’s not the defense that wins championships – it’s the offense. And good on them – the strongest squad with actual depth on the bench that can come in and contribute.
We can talk all the sh*t about Lautaro, but in the matches against the minnows that we scan’t seem to win, he bangs in goals right and left. Hence +20 goals scored or whatever en route to the Scudetto.
💯
And when Lautaro is shooting blanks, they have other REAL strikers capable of scoring too. And they all score frequently. Unlike ours. How long did it took for Nkunku to score? How did Gimenez do? Yeah…