AC Milan won the Scudetto for the first time in 11 years in the 2021-22 season, but thoughts are already on next season and what the next step might be for this team.
According to MilanNews, the objective is to have a better campaign in the Champions League given that the team went out as bottom of the group last season. While there is a change of ownership expected, the feeling is that Paolo Maldini and Frederic Massara must remain around given their excellent work so far.
After well-deserved holidays, Milan will meet at Milanello on July 4 for the first training session of the new season which begins on Saturday 13 August. The change of ownership and the renewals of the directors must be handled, and then the team will go in search of a second star (20th Scudetto) and will try to get out of the Champions League group stages.
The head-to-head with Inter for a second star is the first immediate objective while competing to win the Champions League is not a short-term goal given the time needed to catch up.
The seeded status for the Champion’s League offers a huge opportunity to get to the latter stages – hopefully everything gets thrown at doing so.
To be fair, they couldn’t have gotten into a tougher group last season (2 reigning champions and the silver medalists of England) so maybe this time they’ll have better luck. At least the champions of England, France & Spain won’t be there for sure.
That was always going to be the case being a Pot 4 team though. There was always going to be a Pot 1 and Pot 2 team.
This time round, the scariest looking Pot 3 teams, on paper, are Dortmund, Napoli and Inter, and Milan can’t be drawn with two of those anyway. And this time they will be drawn against one of the lower seeds, Celtic, Brugge or a qualifier.
So Pot 2 will be an incredibly difficult team, one of:
Liverpool
Chelsea
Barcelona
Atletico Madrid
Sevilla
RB Leipzig
Tottenham Hotspur
I’d argue only Leipzig and Sevilla don’t have a better team on paper.
Then Pot 3 will be one of:
Borussia Dortmund
FC Salzburg
Shakhtar Donetsk
Benfica (if they qualify, if not Rangers or Marseille)
Sporting CP
Bayer Leverkusen
True about Pot 2, but Milan outplayed Atletico in both games last year and I don’t see them getting better by the news coming out of Madrid.
It’s better to win your group, but finishing second still gets you into the next round, so drawing Liverpool again isn’t the end of the world.
Given the news coming out of Liverpool I’d fancy our chances against them too. Dortmund is about to lose Haaland, so they won’t be as scary. Honestly I think Barca, Chelsea and Spurs are the ones to avoid in Pot 2. The latter because they will have Conte and Conte has always known how to handle Pioli. In pot three the teams to avoid are the German clubs and Benfica.