It may still be early in the season, but the feeling is that tonight’s game between AC Milan and Napoli can and will tell us a lot about both teams.
Corriere dello Sport (via MilanNews) describes it as a ‘game of truth’ at San Siro this evening, between a team that are searching for consistency and one that have found it early on and lead the league by four points.
Today’s match puts the Scudetto ambitions of Milan and Napoli at stake. While the Neapolitans will have Inter and Atalanta coming up soon and other testing grounds to measure themselves against, for the Rossoneri the situation is already almost a decisive crossroads.
In fact, the table says that Antonio Conte’s team have an eight-point lead over Paulo Fonseca’s, also due to the postponed match against Bologna. A defeat for the Rossoneri would already put a big question mark on their Scudetto ambitions.
Despite the potential gap, the Portuguese coach believes that his side can win the title, as he reiterated with his words yesterday at his pre-match press conference. With a victory, however, Milan would once again close the standings, doing themselves but also Inter and Juventus a favour.
Fonseca will once again rely on Samuel Chukwueze and Noah Okafor from minute one, exactly as he did against Udinese. The one to pay the price will be Rafael Leao, who is perhaps experiencing the most difficult moment since he has been at Milan.
The Portuguese winger is training well but all these exclusions are not punishments, rather tactical choices. Chukwueze will be on the right with Christian Pulisic down the middle.
In defence, Fikayo Tomori should made way for Malick Thiaw who will partner Strahinja Pavlovic. On the left, it could be that Davide Calabria replaces Theo Hernandez rather than Filippo Terracciano.
Game of advantage. Definitely NOT a game of truth.