AC Milan’s Coppa Italia curse will continue on beyond 23 years after they were knocked out at the round of 16 stage by Lazio.
The narrative going into the game at the Stadio Olimpico on Thursday night was about ‘revenge’ for Lazio, who felt injustice after being denied a late penalty in their Serie A defeat to Milan a few days prior at San Siro.
The first half did indeed suggest only one team were fired up for the rematch, but going into the closing stages Massimiliano Allegri’s men had generated the better chances. Yet, with 10 minutes left, captain Mattia Zaccagni headed in the only goal to send Maurizio Sarri’s side through.
It means that Milan now have just Serie A and the Supercoppa Italiana left to compete for, and the cup drought will continue as they have not lifted the trophy since 2002-03. Ivan Stoev has five things we learned from the game.
1. Centre-back issue highlighted
The Rossoneri have been very solid defensively and the Tomori-Gabbia-Pavlovic trio has been superb thus far. Against Lazio, however, Allegri opted to rotate his lineup which is normal given the upcoming schedule.
Matteo Gabbia was dropped in favour of De Winter which was the only change in the back three, but it was definitely felt with the Belgian dropping a rather underwhelming performance.
The former Genoa man hasn’t really made the most of the chances he has had this season and this was no different. He made mistakes on the ball and was partly at fault on the goal as Zaccagni was left unmarked.
Even though a zonal system was used, it seemed like it was De Winter’s job to pick up the Lazio captain. This highlights the need for a solid centre-back to be brought in January to add some much needed depth and experience to the department.
2. The duality of Leao
The Portuguese was the difference make when the two teams played on the weekend having scored the only goal of the game. Thus, the expectation was for him to be the main man on Thursday night too, but he failed to reproduce his performance.
To be fair he did open up space in attack and linked up well with his team-mates for the bigger part of the game. Yet, in the second half he had a very good chance to open the scoring from Estupinan’s cut-back and he sent the shot over after snatching at it.
All in all, Leao failed to be decisive this time around. The blame is not fully or even mostly on him though as his supporting cast didn’t help him much either, and the Portuguese is not a natural number nine anyway.
3. Back in action
A positive from the game has to be Jashari getting back into the starting XI, six months after the last game that he started (for Club Brugge, before his €33m summer move to Milan).
The Swiss had a very solid game, all things considered. He had a difficult start but grew into things, demonstrating decent positioning and passing as well as winning quite a few duels in seemingly effortless fashion.
He also picked out Estupinan with a lovely long ball that pierced Lazio’s lines, and was unlucky to not be involved in a goal since Leao failed to hit the target following the Ecuadorian’s cross.
It’s definitely refreshing to see Jashari back on the pitch and this first glimpse suggests that he could have what it takes to seize a starting spot, as he continues to shake the rust off.
4. A tale of two flanks
Alexis Saelemaekers struggled this time around, as he had quite a few sloppy first touches and failed to make an impact in his usual way as an outlet on the right side.
The Belgian was not lacking in confidence as he tried to create things, yet the execution just was not there. At times Lazio did shift their press well to sometimes double team him, perhaps knowing that Milan were toothless up front so they could commit more bodies.
On the opposite flank, Estupinan was actually quite solid. After a rough pass to start off the game the Ecuadorian picked up the intensity and was quite good both in possession and going forward making it one of his better performances since joining, although the bar is quite low.
He was also unlucky to not get an assist as mentioned above, but it was a decent improvement compared to his other games. He needs to improve further though if he wants to battle it out with Davide Bartesaghi for the spot in the starting XI.
5. Questionable changes
We saw a lot of rotation from Allegri and to be fair he had little to work with in terms of depth. However, one could argue that his substitutions were a bit late and failed to make an impact on the game.
It was also interesting that Milan had the more of the possession this time around but that resulted in lack of creativity going forward, as the Rossoneri were not certain what to do with the ball.
In previous games Milan had no trouble dropping back, managing to absorb the pressure they hitting their opponents on the counter. Against Lazio, Allegri’s side took the initiative – especially in the second half – and the script was flipped.
Milan have dropped quite a few points already against teams in the lower half specifically because they sit back and force Milan to create something in limited space which they almost always fail to do, especially without a recognised No.9.
So, while the lack of squad depth and the gaps in certain departments is a fair mitigating circumstance for Allegri, he must find solutions in games where contain-and-counter is simply not enough
After our win against Lazio, I complained about the lack of attacking football and surrending possession to hold a low block and one dude was trying to be smart without understanding, and five days later we are beaten. Attack is the best form of defense, if we can’t sustain attack and pressure the opposition then we are sure to have a draw or a narrow loss.
Says who? There are teams that attack for 85 minutes and lose. I’ll trust the guy that won 6 titles in Serie A in the past 15 years over you…
There has to be a balance in both phases, the 6 titles manager was sacked by those teams he supposedly won the titles from.
Get the point in the writeup and not aim to argue, Milan adopting a low block against a newly promoted team is absurd, and to think we lost those games makes it more painful.
He didn’t “supposedly” win 6 titles, he did win them.
It’s difficult to accept the point when you’re criticising a 6 times winning coach.
It’d be one thing if we were talking about one of those Portuguese nutters from last season.
But Allegri has the team top. Again.
Maybe nothing will ever live up to what’s in your head (or computer game)?
We had more possession than Lazio this match, and lost.
Maybe don’t fix what isn’t broken?
What in the world does that have to do with anything? Pointless possession where you create zero opportunities is meaningless. Milan spent most of the first half passing back to the keeper. Is that good?
@Dave I’d say Lazio did to us what we did to them in the win. They sat back and let us have the possession instead. We’ve been playing counter attack all season and with good effect. Not sure why we switched it up all of a sudden. We’re sterile being a possession-based team. Our speed allows us to be effective on the counter. Just me 2 cents
I don’t feel like over-analysing this game. We’ve played with a B team, our midfield trio never played a single time together and the subs were late. Nevertheless, I think there are some points worth adressing:
1- We’re basically the anti-Arsenal. Aside from a freekick against Lecce earlier this season, we have 0 goals from set pieces (corners/freekicks). Since we’re not an offensive powerhouse anyways when it comes to buildup, I think it’s in our interest to become a set piece merchant and score as many of them as we can.
2- After crosses earlier this season, set pieces also become our weakness defensively. We conceded from a corner yesterday, almost conceded from a freekick last saturday, Inter hit the post 2 times from corners and the penalty against Roma happened from a freekick. Granted we’re good at stopping counter-attacks, but we can’t allow so many goals in from set pieces.
3- Even though some players barely ever played, it seems clear that our depth is shallow and our bench players are far inferior to our starters.
4- On that, we still need a striker, a real one.
5- We also need a better management of our rotations.
Agree with 1 and 2.
No idea how you’re making any judgment on 3 given you’ve said in the same post you say the midfield trio had never played together and barely played.
So how do you know their potential?
Gabbia was written off for years when he was on bench. It’s hard to impress from the bench.
Also if so called better players were signed (for the bench) it might also unbalance the side. Like when Messi signed for PSG. And every other time teams with too many stars have struggled.
As for the striker, Giménez has so far done everything but score. But he’s still a striker who has shown the ability to score 45 goals in 73 for Feyenord (and it’s not like Serie A is that much superior a league anymore).
So maybe back him and the others before writing off…,(how many players are writing off? 10-12?).
Eredivisie and Serie A are not comparable. Come on bro. Your argument is as weak as the support you have for the team. Defences in Ere are porous, hence why it’s easier to score. The league isn’t just PSV, Ajax and AZ it’s all those other sh!tty B-level teams that make up their top flight league. We have legit competition from 1st to 7th for the title. Our 7th place Juve will maul 90 percent of their league. Heck I’ll even put our 12th place Atalanta to win it all if they were there
As far as our bench come, Nkunku is transparent to say the least, De Winter has been very mistake prone so far. Ricci and Athekame aren’t exactly bad but didn’t show a lot going forward. Jashari has been injured and we know nothing about Odogu. And I’ve just named 6 out of 19 onfield players…
Serie A is a MUCH superior league to Eredivisie. But even with that aside, until he scores consistently, Giménez (who also has 0 assists) is more of a liability. Like what’s the point of let’s say, playing a through ball to him if you know he’s gonna miss ? Defenders have started to take note that he isn’t much of a threat and don’t focus as much on him anymore. And we’re talking about a striker who isn’t particularly tall, slow and not great at dribbling.
But even if we keep him, we still need another striker. We can’t have just one striker in a system so reliant on strikers. And this other striker has to be a true striker, not Nkunku and not Leão.
What we learned is that if Gabbia gets injured we are going to be dropping down from 1st position like crazy. De Winter…We need a backup for Gabbia, Barthesaghi can probably cover for Pavlovic or Tomori, but I don’t think Gabbia has a replacement at all. I mean we knew this in September, but it was lucky that there were no injuries in defense.
I learnt that strange yellow kit should never be worn against the Lazio home kit. There was no light vs dark colour contrast. Both teams wearing light colours.
Should have worn our home kit with the black shorts. Marketing trumps common sense.
As to the game. Allegri needs to rotate players and use the bench more in all games. Players getting starts in this game were rusty from limited prior game time.
We should have rotated a goal keeper yesterday too.
When Milan is playing against bottom table teams, they should play RLC up top and feed him with crosses. Against Lazio, he had a few great headers that could’ve resulted in goals.
If RLC could rediscover his 10 goals in a season form that nicely complete the midfield.
He could play instead of Fofana.
Allegri obviously should have subbed in Puli and Modric at the 60th minute, or the 65th at the latest. That’s how we might have won this one. Changes only at the 80th minute was painfully weak.
Leao was poor in this game and has actually been poor on the ball ( by his standards) for several matches now. I can’t remember a successful dribble in the last 3 matches. Yes, he had a good (albeit lucky) finish on the goal against Lazio, but generally he gets the ball in good places and is too ambitious and loses it.
Imo, they did good on the market. What changed everything is Allegri’s sudden change in system. I believe he saw our defensive fragility and thus decided to go with 352. But now we have wingers playing as strikers. I still think, in order to get the best out of this bunch, a formation change is needed. A 433 or a 343/3421 with Leao and Pulišić on the wings.