Stefano Pioli has named a 23-man squad for AC Milan’s adventure in the Champions League group stage. Notable exclusions are Yacine Adli and Aster Vranckx, while Alessandro Florenzi is in despite his injury.
The squad was announced just a few minutes ago by Milan (via Luca Maninetti), which was expected given that the UEFA deadline is midnight. In total, 23 players have been included and six of them are locally or association-trained players.
Goalkeepers: Mike Maignan, Antonio Mirante.
Defenders: Davide Calabria, Alessandro Florenzi, Sergino Dest, Fikayo Tomori, Simon Kjaer, Pierre Kalulu, Matteo Gabbia, Theo Hernandez, Fode Ballo-Toure.
Midfielders: Ismael Bennacer, Sandro Tonali, Tommaso Pobega, Rade Krunic, Charles De Ketelaere, Brahim Diaz, Alexis Saelemaekers.
Attackers: Junior Messias, Rafael Leao, Ante Rebic, Divock Origi, Olivier Giroud.
A team can name a total of 25 players for the competition, but at least eight of them must be either locally trained or association-trained (in italics above). Milan, as you can see in the list above, have six of those and thus were able to name 23 players.
The likes of Yacine Adli, Malick Thiaw and Aster Vranckx have been excluded after initially being in the running. The same can be said for Ciprian Tatarusanu, but his exclusion was more expected given that Antonio Mirante is a association-trained player.
Alessandro Florenzi has been included in spite of his injury and thus took the total up to 23, which makes sense given that he’s basically a ‘free inclusion’. It remains to be seen if he will recover before the group stage has come to an end.
