When you step up for a penalty, the shot has a 76% chance of going in, according to xG. AC Milan fall almost 20% short, though.
The focus on penalties have returned for Milan in a similar period to last season. Last year, it was the Fiorentina game that lingered in minds, but now, the Rossoneri are left thinking about the Juventus blunder.
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Rafael Leao’s misses are strong in the mind, but the best chance of the game was Christian Pulisic’s spot kick.
Deeper look
Unfortunately, the Diavolo are the worst team in Europe from the spot, but the stats are really strange. As MilanPress writes, the team have just a 58% conversion rate from penalties recently, meaning they are falling short of the 76% success rate expected.
Is it unlucky or an issue, though? Well, the report looks into things and finds that there are five players with a 75% success rate or higher at the club. Pervis Estupinan (100%), Christian Pulisic (87%) after the two misses in Turin, then Luka Modric, and Christopher Nkunku (80%), finally Santiago Gimenez (75%).
In short, there is no shortage of suitable candidates, but there is a mental step missing. Fear, perhaps, and this is what is holding them back. It cannot be allowed to continue, after all, fear is a risk to success.
You can thank Theo and Abraham for the low percentage. Take their misses out and what’s the conversion rate?
It would be the same percentage if you take out Pulisic misses.
Theo missed 1,
Abraham missed 1.
Pulisic has missed 2 in that span.
Gimenez missed 1 as well.
Except he has made penalties.
Pulisic never missed a penalty in his entire career and then that fiasco with Theo and Abraham happened and he misses 2. Both coincidentally in Torino. Maybe whenever they play in Piemonte someone else takes the PKs haha
I am going to provide an example of “Deeper Look”
This took me two prompts with ChatGPT (one to get the data and one to format it as best I can for here)
This is specifically for Serie A only since that is our only concern this year (top 4) …
This is the “raw” data I sourced from GPT
IMPORTANT – this is _WRONG_ as it is missing two events, I’ll address that below.
2025–26 (current season)
Date | Opponent | Taker | Result
2025-10-05 | Juventus (A) | Christian Pulisic | Missed (over the bar)
2024–25 (last season)
Date | Opponent | Taker | Result
2025-03-30 | Napoli (A) | Santiago Giménez | Missed (saved by Meret)
2025-03-08 | Lecce (A) | Christian Pulisic | Scored (from the spot in a 3–2 win)
2025-02-22 | Torino (A) | Christian Pulisic | Missed (saved by Milinković-Savić)
2025-01-26 | Parma (H) | Christian Pulisic | Scored (38′)
2024-10-06 | Fiorentina (A) | Theo Hernández | Missed (saved by De Gea)
2024-10-06 | Fiorentina (A) | Tammy Abraham | Missed (saved by De Gea)
This is an analysis of that data (I would not claim it is “deep” except by comparison.
Summary: Of the 7 penalties taken in the league, we scored two. That is a 29% conversion rate. Typically xG on a penalty is 0.79 (79%). This is clearly far below par.
Last season of the 6 league penalties taken, we had 4 different takers. 33% of those takers where due to “Penalty Gate.”
Analysis:
It is likely Pulisic is a problem at this exact moment with only a 50% conversion rate in his last 4 attempts. On the broader view he is still accurate and reliable.
Further continuing in the broader view, last year was a cultural mess for Milan that Allegri is sorting out. With only 6 data points, it is hard to draw conclusions. Given Allegri’s statements about the most recent pen, we can expect to see Pulisic step up to the spot when we have a next penalty.
IMPORTANT – WRONGness
We actually had 8 pens total as I wanted to be sure and used Transfermarkt. If I were actually writing an article (I get between 1.50 euros and 2.00 euros per word depending on topic and publication) I would reconcile the discrpenancy, add to the table above, then reconsider/rewrite the analysis.
This all took me about 15 min to do as described and write the above. Again only deep by comparison.
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Okay so what next?
Well we only had 8 pens last year and I think Inter had 11. Why the discrepancy. If I wanted to do something “deep” and I wanted to stir the pot as this particular author seems to be focused upon, then I’d get the match reports and look at all the pens not called, went to VAR, etc for Inter (top awarded pens) and us.
I’d then potentially bring some mentions of press bias and history into the formative analysis.
This would likely take b/t 3 and 4 hours to research and write, then I’d have to spend another hour editing down to about 1000 words (typical length of such an article that will gain engagement)
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Why are we not getting the basic analysis I suggest on pen takers as a gateway drug for the more in depth analysis I am suggesting on pen awards?
Right now I can only decide to become a paying supporter of this site based on the quality I am seeing and its opinion on what “deeper look” means.
C’mon folks, do better.
(Entire post, beginning to end was 22 minutes, i.e. not a great deal of effort for a much better representation of the SempreMilan brand.)