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Official: Chelsea vs. AC Milan starting XIs – Allegri goes with three-man defence again

Massimiliano Allegri has named the final starting line-up of preseason, as AC Milan take on Chelsea at Stamford Bridge.

The major bit of team news for Milan is that Christian Pulisic is nursing an ankle injury and didn’t board the flight with the rest of the team for the final two friendlies.

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Having played Leeds United in Dublin on Saturday, Allegri has understandably opted to go with basically a fully changed side, so as to manage minutes with the first competitive game just seven days away.

Chelsea vs. AC Milan: Official starting XIs

Once again it seems as though the coach has decided to rely upon a three-man defence, with Andrei Coubis, Fikayo Tomori – making his Stamford Bridge return – and Filippo Terracciano ahead of Mike Maignan.

Alexis Saelemaekers and Davide Bartesaghi are therefore expected to act as wing-backs, with Youssouf Fofana, Samuele Ricci and Yunus Musah as the three-man midfield. Luka Modric was expected to start, but instead is on the bench.

In attack, Ruben Loftus-Cheek should act just behind Rafael Leao in a 3-5-1-1 system. Matteo Gabbia, Strahinja Pavlovic, Pervis Estupinan, Ardon Jashari, Modric, Samuel Chukwueze, Noah Okafor and Santiago Gimenez are all on the bench.

Official Milan XI (3-5-1-1): Maignan; Terracciano, Tomori, Coubis; Saelemaekers, Fofana, Ricci, Modric, Bartesaghi; Loftus-Cheek; Leao.

Bench: Terracciano, Pittalrella, Torriani, Estupinan, Gimenez, Modric, Okafor, Chukwueze, Jashari, Pavlovic, Sia, Dutu, Gabbia.

Official Chelsea XI (4-2-3-1): Sanchez; James, Adarabioyo, Chalobah, Cucurella; Caicedo, Enzo Fernandez; Pedro Neto, Palmer, Gittens; Joao Pedro.

Bench: Jorgenses, Slonina, Delap, Essugo, Santos, Hato, Malo Gusto, Anselmino, George, Acheampong, Estevao, Rak-Sakyi, Antwi, Walsh.

Tags AC Milan Chelsea Milan

94 Comments

  2. Good to see Coubis getting an immediate second look. Hope he impresses

    Odd to not see Sala and Eletu on the bench. Sala may be fatigued (played quite a bit yesterday) but Eletu?

    Odd to see GK Terra on the bench. That dude was useless yesterday.

    Hope to see Torriani again in the second half.

    I’m keen to see how our 352 holds up against Chelsea’s first team .

  3. Coubis got second chance , hope he doing well and got promoted to first team this season . This kid has so many potential

  4. Milannews.it reports Modrić is on the bench and it’s Musah starting in a 4231:

    Mike
    Terra Tomori Coubis Bart
    Fofana Ricci
    Musah RLC Saele
    Leao

    1. I’m seeing 3421

      MM
      FTerra – FTom – AC
      DB – YF – SC – YM
      RLC – AS
      RL

      And Jesus we are getting dominated like we are Perth Glory.

  6. Played 8 at the back in the second half vs Leeds and this is the reward. And that mf Musah somehow starts both games. Allegri should be nowhere near a top club

  7. I don’t care what anyone says but I don’t ever want to see fofona in that starting line up again. Can’t even give a decent pass from 3ft away.

    1. Fofana is our major problem, may be I will rate Musah higher than him. He is virtually not doing anything in the game. I don’t think I too late to offload him

  12. Wow, Fofana so bad, Musah awful Coubis !! RLC just strolling around without a care in the world….Tomori, well the less said the better

      1. That does not mean the Italians are good either. We are better off getting De Winter than any other below average and overrated Italians.

        1. Dude’s a Milan fan but doesn’t know what nationality are their players while hating on everything Italian. Why are you even following ITALIAN club that plays in ITALIAN league then? Go watch PL.

        2. So he criticizes Italians cause some non Italian made mistake, and somehow this makes sense to you and proves that Italians are not good football players? Where are you from, i want to know from which genius country you come from with such advanced logic?

      2. “Andrei Coubiș was born in Milan, Lombardy, from Romanian parents that arrived there from Suceava”

        Oye 🤦‍♂️(this doesn’t mean I agree with the original post btw)

  14. What happened to promote the youngsters? We need to start admitting that they are not just good enough and frankly speaking there are not many good Italian players right now. So stop with these get Italian players BS. They are not good enough

    1. You don’t get it. Most of you don’t. Youngsters make mistakes. Nobody plays 18 year old kids and expect a Tiago Silva performance in first or 5th game. It is normal. So hard to do 2+2? You don’t have to promote any youngsters, 0, but then you but the player back for x10 later.

      1. Real Madrid doesn’t promote youngsters into the first team unless they are winning or have bad injury crisis. But they can spend 100M on any position, whenever they want. So they don’t have to.

    3. Give them a chance to develop. They can make mistakes in friendlies. He isnt even an Italian. The hate for call to have more Italian on this site is unbelievable.

  15. And people tell me that Chelsea and Ted Boehly are a joke. They were thinking out of the box and bent the rules. Now their bench is better than Milan first team.

      1. No they don’t. This season they spent 40 million net. We can go back. If you think any club can spend 300M per season you shouldn’t even comment. Milan spent -80 this season, or better said made a profit. Why isn’t this invested?

        1. I agree with you on Milan re-investing. But, do some research buddy and look at how much Chelsea have spent since Boehly came on board.

          1. “ They were thinking out of the box and bent the rules. ” do you understand anything you read or? 😭 They spent a lot first season. This year 47M. You do understand outgoing transfers are taken into account? They sold players for 240M this season. They can easily make back the money they invested + make money. Do you even understand what their tactic was with the transfer window? I doubt it, “buddy”.

          2. Instead of trying to be a smart ass try understanding first. We can discuss when you actually get what happened and what is happening.

          3. Okay let’s go over since Boehly took over:

            22/23: 12th place. Expenditure: €630 million
            23/24: 6th place. Expenditure: €464 million
            24/25: 4th place. Expenditure: €282 million
            2025: Expeduture: €279 million and counting

            Do they also do a good job in offloading deadwood, absolutely. But, get Boehly’s balls out of your mouth. You come on here and argue with everyone with your stupid takes.

          4. Omg stop being annoying and actually check it. You only included money spent, I told you nicely that SALES ARE ALSO TAKEN INTO ACCOUNT. Let’s do a few seasons for you and then you can try yourself.

            25/26

            Income 16 €231.95m
            Expenditure 23 €279.65m
            Overall balance €-47.70m

            24/25

            Income 31 €239.00m
            Expenditure 30 €281.90m
            Overall balance €-42.90m

            ????? Which part is not clear to you “buddy”?

          7. Goku, we both know you are too stupid for this topic. Your attempts are embarrassing, you couldn’t insult me even if a brain magically appeared in your skull. 🤣

        2. Disagree. Chelsea has massively overspent, try to compensate via selling off hotels and women team. And yes longer term contracts. But most importantly just pure luck or maybe even hidden behind the scene deals is someone bought their expensive flops with decent fee- like Arsenal (most guilty), Man U (Mount) and even Saudi teams for Koulibaly etc.

          1. That was just 22/23. 1 year when they setup this model. They setup Chelsea for success for times to come, but you don’t get it. Yes, it was creative and is now banned, but they don’t need that anymore. Honestly, seems too complicated for most of you to understand.

          2. We understand. Just because we disagree doesn’t mean not understand. They were just lucky or just hidden deals/ given favours with their dead wood. Also lucky with Mudriyk that they don’t need to pay him wages due to ban. Team like Milan bought their squad academy players helped too

    3. Lmao now you’re kissing up to Chelsea based off a friendly against a Milan that wasn’t a starter. I mean Coubis won’t start for us. All off one friendly. Go back to troll farm and please stop using ChatGPT for every post. You’re just lazy.

      1. Kissing Chelseas badge? Listen Goku, you are way below any acceptable intelligence level. I think people like you shouldn’t be allowed online without doing a test every time. To see there is some progress. Your mor*nic logic needs to be studied, to understand how can a human being be that stupid. I caught a few of you clowns using Chatstupidity and now you want to turn that on me? You literally have to use my words to not be that stupid as usually. Stop embarrassing yourself. I’ve told you I am going to take a sh*t into your mouth every time you try. No problem, it is easy to dunk on such a low iq mo*on. Lay up.

  16. I was expecting Milan to get ran over by Chelsea. Coubis, read somewhere he collected a couple of red cards playing with the Primavera

    1. Seen this too. Clearly the moment was too big for him today. He has a couple years to get his head on straight.

      Needs to realize his physical gifts get him in the show, but it’s his brain and heart that will keep him there.

  19. Mehn… what’s happening to Fofana. The chap doesn’t seem to be improving. Instead he seems to be getting worse.

    1. He was never a good player. I don’t know why you guys are surprised. He’s at best the star man in teams like Cremonese.

  20. First half …

    Keep in mind this is the Chelsea first team (or close enough) to our mix and match.

    The good …

    Musah has kept Gittens under wraps and is showing his press resistance.

    RLC is not a 10. But he is a 9.5 and looks like Zirkzee on a good day.

    Saelemakers looks good going forward.

    The bad …

    Chelsea are playing full speed while we play dull speed. This is a concern as it was a core issue last year too.

    Coubis blew it. OG and a Red in 20 min. Moment too big for him.

    Too many touches. Chelsea plays one touch and slices is open. We take one or two to find the next pass. (Silver lining – we are a mix and match line up) Further good news when we do play one touch Rafa got a nice header in it was offside.

    Ricci is getting beat like a drum in the midfield by the speed of Chelsea players.

    Chelsea is coming hard up our right. Musah has Gittens wide, but the size of the space behind him is an acre. Something isn’t right there.

    1. You forget Leao. He play great today and im surpised he play 1st half like he play at best days. Fenomenal today for me

      1. Thanks good call out.

        I would not agree with “great” but he looks much more comfortable in the center and made some very nice runs and moves.

        That said he did not react one a couple of rebounds as he was not on his toes like a striker would be.

        All in all though defn belonged in the “good” category.

  21. Anyways, 2 goals down against our weakest defence. No problem. Let’s see how this defence reinforcement will go the summer.

  22. Well Allegri is obviously trying out some players. With this back 3 it is obvious. Maybe Coubis had a trial, can he be a first team player for Milan, the 5th option. And so on. Musah is actually doing good at RWB. Allegri will make a player out of him. It seems like the most played player in same position during this preseason.

  23. Fofana was so rubbish. Even at the death if half time in the own penalty ox, he didn’t kick ball high up and trued to dribble. At this point, he is playing because of the exorbitant transfer fee Milan paid.

  24. 😅goodness gracious it’s only 2-0 lol
    At this point can’t help but chuckle because I don’t want to cry
    I think I can only judge the first 20 or so minutes before the sending off…and even that was also bad too. Now we don’t know where we’re at going into the season opener/copa

      1. Yeah, it’s hard to judge with 10 men. I really want to see Modric with the starting 11. I wonder if he’ll be in the regista role or more advanced.

  25. I believe Allegri’s general theory is Milan team isn’t in the best shape atm, therefore it’ll be prudent to get one offensive formation and another one more defensive to play the top teams, hence 433 and 3421.

    But Like I said before, I think the tactical tinkering is gonna cost us . With how I’ve seen Milan in recent years, training with one formation and sticking to it will benefit the players better. Then to adjust to teams when necessary, you make tweaks within that formation.

    1. All due respect to the teams but our first three games are Bari, Cremonese and Lecce.

      I suspect preseason was for tinkering and these first three games will be for fine tuning.

  27. Musah breaks up transition in the mid with a slide. Gets up and chases 45 yards to break it up again.

    Still all effort and all action. Far fewer mistakes this game.

  31. The commentator is annoying me now….he’s totally getting our player’s names wrong 🤦‍♂️

    Oh cool, a pen as I’m typing

  32. Did CB Terra just lay down so that Gittens could have a clear shot at goal? I think I am done with him to as anything more than a situational utility player.

    Bartesaghi looks better on the wing today. However he still moves more like a CB to me.

    And Musah undoes a good days work with an unnecessary pen.

  39. I honestly feel bad for terraciano at this point. Buddy is a right winger or wingback constantly being asked to play as Left CB cuz we refuse to just buy the players we need. Of course he’s not gonna do good there, he’s not a freaking LCB

  40. Coubis is obviously not ready for the big leagues. We were a man down most of this game. Did fine the second half a man down.

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