AC Milan head coach Massimiliano Allegri will name a starting line-up to face Fiorentina that is almost obligatory.
Milan have been absolutely battered by injuries in the past week or so, with six absentees expected for the game against La Viola this evening. Given the squad only has 19 outfield players to begin with, it is a dire situation for such a big game, one in which a win would send the Rossoneri top.
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During his pre-game press conference, Allegri conceded that the injury problems will affect things, but at the same time he doesn’t want them to be excuses and believes he has enough players to get by.
AC Milan vs. Fiorentina: Predicted starting XIs
According to La Gazzetta dello Sport (seen below), Milan will go into the game with Mike Maignan in goal and an unchanged three-man defence of Fikayo Tomori, Matteo Gabbia and Strahinja Pavlovic ahead of him. As it has been all season, the rearguard will have to be the strength tonight, one feels.
Zachary Athekame and Davide Bartesaghi are down as the right and left wing-backs respectively. That is because Pervis Estupinan is out, and Alexis Saelemaekers is tipped to play behind the striker Rafael Leao.
Ruben Loftus-Cheek was originally meant to play the attacking midfielder role but he is now also a doubt. Samuele Ricci, Luka Modric and Youssouf Fofana are down as the midfield trio, with Adrien Rabiot sidelined.
Predicted Milan XI (3-5-1-1): Maignan; Tomori, Gabbia, Pavlovic; Athekame, Fofana, Modric, Ricci, Bartesaghi; Saelemaekers; Leao.
Predicted Fiorentina (3-5-2): De Gea; Pongracic; Mari, Ranieri; Dodo, Mandragora; Nicolussi Caviglia, Fagiolo, Gosens; Fazzini, Piccoli.
ℹ️ The predicted XIs for #MilanFiorentina, according to @Gazzetta_it.
🤔 Thoughts? pic.twitter.com/m498oIfSte
— SempreMilan (@SempreMilanCom) October 19, 2025
Off topic: so I was watching the Napoli match yesterday against Torino and I must say that Napoli is so mid, zero tactic, just useless crosses upon crosses into the box and that’s it. So overrated to be called a scudetto contender, some even consider them as the favorite just because they win it last season luckily despite having 1 game a week….
Yeah, and it reminds me when they used to spam those ”cut-inside-far-post-crosses” with Insigne. Sometimes, good defending or when you simply don’t concede many goals, perhaps makes you think everythings alright.
We are missing jashari and rabbit in midfield, Pulisic, nkuku as attackers and estupinan in wing back. That’s pretty bad cos substitute list looks awful. But we will pull this through. It’s a true test if we have enough options to rely on. I am supporting my team to beat Fiore 2 nil
We are back on top if we win this match tonight 🙂
I know most of these injuries occured with internationals but no one can tell me there’s no correlation of increased muscle injuries and Allegri’s return. It feels like 2013 again. These Italian managers don’t have a clue how to manage players’ fitness. Pioli was just as bad.
That is because they came from their clubs as bit part options or became available for cheap due to their long laundry list of injuries that made them unreliable and not dependable. They wouldn’t have been sold to us if they would be of use to their former clubs.
Our hand me downs from a thrift store will tear quicker and more frequently than new, properly made clothing comprise of quality materials that are made with a top of the line manufacturing clothing. That is what we see coming to the forefront.
Gasperini said CDK was completely out of shape and way below optimal shape when he arrived to Atalanta.
He took a few months to integrate him fully into his squad.
Management somehow figured it was a great idea to do the following when some with clearer minds opposed vehemently with just cause to the following:
1. Saving 4 to 5 million on a transfer fee for Jashari was more important than preparing him for a transition season correctly and get him intergrated in the best shape possible, bypassing his training camp. Pushing his transfer back.
2. The same with Nkunku who was a bit part player, hasn’t started regularly in years.
3. To build with RLC who has been a perennial sideliner, coming off another injury riddled season.
4. In response to our failure with plan number 1, we opted for a great player in Rabbiot, he too was kept away from playing and continuing his preperation with the squad after a fight. Hence him going to the break in less than ideal condition.
5. Depending and over-relying on Pulisic, who has been incredible but is not physically built to sustain the intensity and physicality he brings to the pitch, hence never had runs of healthy consecutive, successful seasons. He has been a liability health wise.
6. We let Theo, an iron man we managed to fatigue go to save 10 million euros over 5 years, so 2 annually over a 5 year contract, and replaced him with a player who subscribed as the frequent marathon member at his clubs walk in clininc.
They erroneously thought these would be the answers to our depth and quality problems, short, medium and long term. They guessed the best way to optimize our chances of being able to compete week in week out. We have a wage bill significantly lower than other clubs and post profits 3 years straight at the cost of stability on the pitch and in our clinic .
Allegri cannot be faulted for trying to make due with the options offered to him. He is supposed to train players to be able to be fit enough to compete over 90 minutes at least once a week. That is the minimum standard and threshold. Blame the mechanic and driver for doing what he could with used broken down parts he was imposed when he is not being able to make it to the end of a race…
Somehow Pulisic has played in enough games the last two plus seasons to lead Serie A in combined G/A yet he has been a liability health wise? When you say something like that it’s hard to take you seriously about anything else.
There is clearly an issue with the transfer policy which is to buy cheap at all costs, we haven’t had one summer with Redbird in charge where at least 70% of our transfers and starting options had one full training camp or at least a month to prepare before kickoff. So the coaches were always left for dead to scramble due to poor planning and bad financial decisions.
3 Italians to start huh? Guess it takes a real emergency.