AC Milan got back to winning ways this evening as they managed to beat Lecce two goals to nil. Rafael Leao was the big hero with a brace and down below are the player ratings for the Rossoneri.
Starting XI
Maignan (6.5): He did very well with his distribution today but as far as goalkeeping goes, he wasn’t called into action that much. A couple of good saves but that was it.
Kalulu (6): Right-back isn’t his best position, that seems clear compared to what we have seen from him in the centre. In any case, a solid display but he lost his man when Lecce hit the post from very close range (should have scored).
Thiaw (6): Solid from the big man at the back and he was also calm under pressure. He committed one too many fouls, though, which is something that he can work on.
Tomori (6.5): Led the defence this evening and did really well with his passing at times. His ability to come back even when it looks like the opponent has passed him is impressive.
Hernandez (6.5): A strong display from the Frenchman who helped out a lot in both phases of the game. He nearly had a couple of good moments, bursting down the left flank, and he also drifted inside when needed.
Krunic (7): Another commanding and tidy game for the Bosnian. He has really grown into this role and he does really well to always stay calm, not always going for the first and best option but rather analysing the situation. He dominated the midfield along with Tonali and Bennacer.
Tonali (7): It was a wonderful cross for Leao’s first goal and just like Krunic, he was instrumental for Milan in the midfield battle.
Messias (5): It didn’t work out for him this evening although he got into good positions. The first touch or the final touch was missing from him, unfortunately.
Diaz (5.5): He always does well to turn away from his man quickly but today the end product was lacking. He can do much better in the final third.
Leao (8.5 – MOTM): Undisputed man of the match this evening with a lovely brace, and yet another solo goal. His importance is undeniable and if he can keep this up, then Milan have a big chance of getting top four.
Rebic (6): Much better than what we have seen earlier in the season. He made several good runs and this time out, it was the delivery (from Diaz mostly) that was lacking. In that sense, we can’t fault him too much.
Substitutes
Bennacer (6.5): Very strong in the defensive and recovery phase. And his passing is impressive as always.
Kjaer (6): He didn’t have much to do at the back, but his passing was just what it needed to be.
Saelemaekers (6): A couple of nifty moves from him this evening, much better than Messias anyway.
De Ketelaere (N/A): He didn’t play enough to get a rating.
Origi (N/A): He didn’t play enough to get a rating.
As the title of the post says very well, Rafael Leão is the DIFFERENCE-MAKER. Period.
LEAO LEAO LEAO LEAO LEAO LEAO LEAO. Renew him, and consider 19m fine from Sporting is a transfer fee. Leao exciting growth and maturity is like a new signing. Especially 19 mil, compared to 35 mil
Tomori make big mistake like beginner near end of the game. He should be rated at least 1 point down.
You can’t do that in any game no matter who ever you play against.
6 for Rebic lmao, he was dreadful.
Much better from Rebic? I think I saw one or two successfull passes. Other than that, he lost every ball. In my opinion he was our worst.
Also, Krunic plays like he gets a bonus each time he turns around and passes backwards. It was much better when Bennacer came in.
rebic is 6? or -6? are we watching same match?
Krunic is the epitome of a useful player, extremely aware on a tatical level. Every squad needs a guy like him.
Professional win.
Awesome game by Rafa. He even scored a header, something that we rarely see.
Let’s hope Napoli beats Juventus and Atalanta beats Roma.
We should look into that kid Banda for the back up LW. He was destroying Kalulu in the 1st half.
Now i wonder where are the people who said milan must sell leao next windows?
Turns out players do have their low moments, and turns out players do need to play in their position in the right formation
If he does not renew his contract, then yes we must sell him in the summer.
No we don’t have to do anything.
You’re supposed to be a football fan not an accountant.
Stop worrying about money.
Sure, now it’s all about his contract.
Why sell him if he does not renew? Remember, a player has value being the actual field. Keeping Leao until his contract runs out means having him on the field contributing. That’s how you win the league, qualify for CL, and so on. That’s valuable.
Kessie is a good example of this. Milan let his contract run out but his presence on the field is why we won the Scudetto. That’s more valuable than getting a transfer fee.
I know Rafa got 2 goals and the MOTM, but he was really asleep for the first half hour, miscontrolling balls multiple times.
His ceiling is just so high given his talents.
Someday I hope to see him give 100% for 90 mins, it would be something to behold.
He is the difference maker
Leao has similar talent to Mbappe.
That is the level he must aspire to
“Kalulu: Right-back isn’t his best position” Well neither is CB, since he always leaves holes in the defence and we always concede goals when he is playing as a CB. Maybe CDM will be a good place for him to use his speed which is his number one trait.
Mesias is just not made for top teams, waste of 10mil really.
CDK same as always, i think it’s time for him to be tried in some other position and for Adli to be given the chance as an AM.
kalulu is Thuram esque (perhaps not recently).
He has the technical ability and speed to play well in many positions.
As you say, he would probably do a good job at DM
Adli must be a very patient man. Given the performance =s of CDK. Yet he still gets no chances.
At this stage he is more likely to be worth 35m
CDK as a false nine in a 4-3-3, using Bennacer and Tonali as mezzalas and Krunic in the holding midfielder position?
Is this the same Kalulu who was central to our title win last season?
Kalulu has the potential to be one of our most important players because he can play RB or CB which he covers for three players.
That’s more important than any arbitrary rating that fans or the media give him.
Messias is always a threat. He has an effect on the other team as they don’t want to give him too much space or lose track of him. He reminds me of KP Boateng. He may not be great but his presence is important. Even the best teams in the world have some players who are only there to support the stars.
Brahim Diaz and Rebic should swap scores. Rebic’s passing and touch was bad. Brahim Diaz wasn’t very productive but he didn’t play badly.
Rebic was very clearly a 4. He always gives more than Origi but that in no way means he brings anything to the squad
How is Rebic a 6 here I’m must have watched the wrong game. He does not belong anywhere near Milan cz he is dreadful this season. I would give him a 2 to be generous
Kalulu should just be played at his natural RB position so he can find his rythm there again. CB is covered with Thiaw and Gabbia backup. And if we go in for the left footed CB in the transters then no need wasting his time there.
Diaz should always play on the right. Give Pobega more game time. And Pioli just makes his favourites clear doesn’t he. Messias over Saele.
Project Adli was sadly sacrificed for project CDK. I don’t think Pioli even makes him play in training. Why loose one for another when there could have been a plan to accommodate both of them.
Pobega is injured and needs one more month to recover.
It’s not favoritism. This season Messias already made 5 goals and 2 assist while Alexis made 3 goals and 2 assist in all competitions. Stats shows Messias is better when comes to attacking while Alexis provides more balance and better defense with his pressing.
Professional win indeed. Leao was terrible! I mean how could he not score a hat trick? Horrible. We should Sell Sell Sell! Maybe someone will give us 5M for him????? 🤪🤪🤪🤪.
Don’t get what Pioli sees in CDK at this point. They need to shut him down and just let him watch and learn the Italian game. The more we run him out there the worse it is. Leave him on bench and try Adli – he cannot be much worse lol. To much pressure and too many expectations on CDK. Sit him down before you ruin this kid for life (if that hasn’t happened already). Reminds me of Yoann Gourcuff situation.
CDK situation can not be compared with any other players from the present or past.
Gourcuff was actually playing well , scoring and assisting on few goals, both in UCl and Serie A. His problem was his attitude and refusal to adapt to new country and language.
From all the reports we read about CDK, none of that is the issue with him. He just look like he doesn’t have any confidence and like he forgot hownto play football
I was comparing the expectations not the player’s traits directly. Yes CDK has a great attitude and work ethic and is trying to adapt. Just saying we should shut him down to avoid all of the negative energy this young kid is facing. Let him sit and learn. Like it or not we have made a significant investment in him and we need to protect it and for me that means shutting him down for the rest of the season and hopefully after another summer he can regain the confidence he had and adapt to the league and position. To me there is no point running him out there week in and week out.
He’s just not cut out for this level of football. Milan need to accept their mistake and sell him. One of the mid or lower level premier league teams can afford him and give him the game time needed to develop him. There’s still hope for him but not at Milan.
Far too high grade for many players.
Maigang: 6
Kalulu: 5,5
Tomori: 7
Thiaw: 6,5
Theo: 6
Krunic: 5,5
Tonali: 5,5
Leao: 7
Diaz: 5,5
Messias: 5
Rebic: 4
Forza Milan1
Yes of course let’s give Tonali who gave the assist for the first goal with a perfect cross and unlocked the game and didn’t put a foot wrong all match a rating of 5.5 it makes sense.
Also Leao, what if he scored and won the game single handedly? he needed 3 more goals to get a perfect rating. He was just as good as Tomori, who almost gifted them a goal in the end.
Lazio lost
Juve lost
Now let’s hope Roma burnt out from european league and atalanta win
Yes. Milan must be fully concentrated and highly motivated. To win against Roma and Lazio, also against “small teams”. Than we have bigger chances to enter last four in photo finish of the season.
Important 3 points, even though it wasn’t a pretty game.
We got lucky when at 0-0 Banda missed a wide open goal.
Very good game by Leao. I saw him engaged throughout the game offensively and defensively.
Finally, on a set piece he was actually in the box with the big boys scoring a header. There is no excuse a guy 6’2 like him to be a non factor on set pieces as he has been up until today. Good job. Now he needs to continue doing it.
The rest of the players were OK, but Kalulu didn’t look good at RB.
Now hopefully Atalanta do us a favor vs Roma tomorrow and then bring on Roma. We have unfinished business with them after what happened in the 1st game and the crisis that happened after that game.
Forza Milan
Perfect summation. I’ve been pulling to see more of Kalulu at RB. He wasn’t spectacular, but remember he’s been playing at CB for a couple of seasons now and unless he gets regular time at RB it will always be an awkward performance, but the fact is the kid was originally an RB and his height, pace, and playing style lend themselves to that position more than they do to CB, where we need to focus more on Thiaw.
Milan should consider swooping for Lee Kangin this summer. Extremely underrated atm in terms of market value but many clubs will catch on quickly. He could’ve unlocked games like this for Rebic helping us get at least a couple of more goals, not to mention his defensive contributions as well. He’s Korean but speaks Spanish fluently and English well enough. Still very young so will likely acclimate quickly to serie a if brought over.
A comfortable win. Everyone played well except Rebic, Origi, CDK, Diaz, Kalulu, and Messias. The last two names i can understand because they’re just recovered from injury.
And Milan could win 4-0 if the referee do his job correctly when Theo was fouled in the pinalti area and Lecce handsball. What’s crazy is the stupid referee even check VAR for Milan first goal, thinking Tonali was offside lmao.
Hopefully Giroud already recovered for Roma because Pioli can’t rely on Rebic and Origi.
I’ve always said that Kalulu is more of a center-back than right-back, but more importantly, he’s a great player who can play both roles very well.
He didn’t have one of his best performances though.
Let’s take our hats off to Leao, Krunic and Tonali. They were great.
Now we should go and play against Roma like our lives depend on it. Because it does. We need to take revenge for that ridiculous first leg, too.
In truth is was a poor performance and we could’ve easily dropped points had Lecce scored instead of hitting the post.
I actually think the midfield was dreadful for the sort of game it was. Of course they dominated. They’re supposed to against Lecce.
However they were not creative enough even if Tonali provided that one assist. Except for that they were terrible.
This game really wasn’t much different to the other games where we’ve failed to pick up points against so called weaker teams. It was only real luck and Leao that made the difference.
It also showed once again the problem with having too big a squad. There was no reason for Saelemaekers not to start as he hadn’t started against Napoli but because Pioli also has Messias he decided to give him a go.
That’s 60 mins in Saelemaekers‘ career he’s not getting back at a time when he’s enjoying form that we could’ve capitalised on.
The squad is too big. It’s not about quality but too much quantity which means the squad players aren’t getting a consistent run. It was good to see Kalulu, Krunic and Rebic being used as the utility players they are. This makes all three crucial. If we can keep all three then we can focus on adding quality to the starting line up.
I think Milan already did creative enough against Lecce. They tried one two combination, long pass, through pass, solo run, etc. The problem is it always hard facing team like Lecce who dug deep from the 1st to 90 minutes.
It’s never easy to break down these defensive teams. Inter won 3-0 but watch their match, they struggled just the same if not more before they scored the first goal, and Empoli missed a one-on-one at 0-0.
Gone are the days of easy weeks in Serie A, specially for Milan which is a team that flourish in open spaces. Inter can spam crosses into the box and hope for the best, Juve will happily sit back even against smaller sides and hit them on the counter. Milan can’t, we have to try and try to break their numbers down, and we lack the creative players to do so.
Also the choice of Messias, it’s understandable because he’s more of a goal scorer. Pioli wanted to win this match. I like Saelemaekers better and he’s a better choice when he cuts in but Messias is probably more useful out wide isolated.
“Gone are the days of easy weeks in Serie A, specially for Milan which is a team that flourish in open spaces. Inter can spam crosses into the box and hope for the best, Juve will happily sit back even against smaller sides and hit them on the counter. Milan can’t, we have to try and try to break their numbers down, and we lack the creative players to do so.” -Precisely. Which is why we do so much better against good teams (even when we lose sometimes). Against good opposition we surrender possession, for the same reason you state, “we lack the creative players”, but then we are able to hit them on the counter with our lightning fast left flank plus Diaz and Giroud in the box, and then let our defense do the rest (or hope they do). We struggle against small teams that park the bus and don’t allow us space to run because we don’t have those players that can unlock those closed down defenses, but then we are also unable to employ the rope-a-dope strategy that Juventus has always used so that we can take advantage of our speed.
It’s better to give a chance to our primavera rather than the pointless Rebic again and again.
Dude, Primavera have their own battles. They just lost 3-0 in Youth Champions League semi final and right now they’re at 14th in Primavera 1 league which they must keep winning if they want to stay.
So Pioli can’t call some primaveras to the first team and make Abate’s work a lot harder than before. Maybe in the pre-season Pioli can try some primavera but right now he can’t do that.
Look at the Primavera table. If they can’t hack it in the lil kids’ league, how are they supposed to play well in the men’s games?
remember when people here are like “omg its impossible to catch Juve”
well now only 3 points ahead, stop betting against your own team
WE should aim for 2nd place.
More prize money, no qualifiers for europe and of course it’s a better finish in sporting terms.
What is a qualifier for Europe?
I think he is confusing the old days when 4th place would have to play a qualification round to get into the groups. That doesn’t happen anymore for Serie A clubs, but he still has a point (if unintended) in that the higher the league finish the higher the club coefficient and therefore the higher the seeding. So no pot 3 or 4, which is where you get into groups of death. It’s why we ended up with Liverpool and At. Madrid last season, because our coefficient was trash after not having played in the CL for years. Going deep in this year’s competition will greatly aid with this too.
Rebic waaaay to high rating. He is not avaliable, always posistioned wrongly which makes it difficult for the others to find him. So many bad touches that halts the offence, difficult to find flow with him. We badly need a striker, anyone that can play a pass. That will make Leao so much better aswell, giving him more space.
Kalulu was terrible this game. Banda gave him huge problems. Pretty sure taller defenders have their work cut out against quick shorter agile players.
Anyways great 3 points and great performance by Leao. I think we play our best when our backs are against the wall..we can easily be contending for the title if it weren’t for shoddy decisions go against us. The ref in this game was also not great but thankfully it didn’t hurt us.
“The ref in this game was also not great but thankfully it didn’t hurt us.”
I was actually glad how the ref whistled in the beginning and wasn’t mad at the non-penalty thingie as it was the right call for sure. But then something happened. Blin got crazy and tackled three times inside 30 seconds and at least two of them were worth a yellow yet nothing was given. Then the clear-as-a-day handball that wasn’t even viewed by the ref/VAR was an absolute disgrace. If you cannot see a foul there you need a guide dog or a serious eye surgeon. Thank god that didn’t come back to haunt us.