Stefano Pioli will name an AC Milan starting line-up for the final time tomorrow night as the 2023-24 season comes to a close against Salernitana.
It will be a night of farewells at San Siro. Olivier Giroud and Simon Kjaer will leave when their contracts expire meaning they will get a great send-off, while Pioli’s exit was also confirmed on Friday.
The two bits of injury news for Milan are that Mike Maignan will be unavailable due to a dislocated finger, while Samuel Chukwueze will also miss out as he continues to recover from a muscle issue.
According to the latest from Sky (as seen below), Pioli is expected to name Marco Sportiello in goal with Davide Calabria, Fikayo Tomori, Matteo Gabbia and Theo Hernandez as the back four from right to left.
The Milan boss is also likely to keep the midfield three with Tijjani Reijnders flanked by Yunus Musah to his right and Ismael Bennacer to his left.
Then, the attacking trident is expected to be Christian Pulisic on the right wing, Rafael Leao on the opposite flank and Olivier Giroud as the striker, meaning he will start his last game for the club.
Predicted Milan XI (4-3-3): Sportiello; Calabria, Tomori, Gabbia, Theo Hernandez; Musah, Reijnders, Bennacer; Pulisic, Giroud, Leao.
Predicted Salernitana XI (3-4-2-1): Fiorillo; Pierozzi, Gyomber, Pellegrino; Sambia, Coulibaly, Maggiore, Zanoli; Tchaouna, Candreva; Simy.
It brings a tear, indeed.
With Pioli, we could finally see the Milan we once knew after years of misery. It was fun watching them play again. We were pretty much not allowed to have any hope before he turned things around.
Thank you Stefano! On fire…
He might not be the best coach but what people don’t understand is that he is an amazing human being. It will be hard for the new coach to build a relationship with the players as Pioli did.
Just to be clear for me Pioli is still a good coach. I’m pretty sure if he had done the same with Napoli who I believe have more or less a squad similar to ours in terms of strength whole Europe would be after him.
why don’t we start Kjaer?
In my opinion, Pioli is the best AC Milan coach after Don Carlo era (since 2009). You can count how many coaches we had since that year. If I am the owner, I will keep Pioli for stability. Forza Milan !!
I think Allegri has to be considered to be the better coach, even slightly.
But other than Allegri, none of the coaches since Ancelotti came even close to what Pioli did (which is sad).
Allegri? How and why.
Stats don’t lie mate.
First of all Allegri has won a total of 6 scudetti, 3 supercoppas, 5 coppas and reached the UCL final twice, that’s way more than what Pioli has ever achieved.
With Milan Allegri has won a scudetto and a supercoppa, which is a title Pioli failed to win. He has been ranked first, second and third, but was dismissed when he was doing really poorly in 2013/14. And although we never really reached the UCL semi-finals, he never failed to make it through the group stage and has reached quarter finals. And starting from 2012 he had to deal with a lot of players leaving because of our crisis.
So I don’t know why we should think that Pioli is better than him, overall or with Milan
Allegri would’ve never been able to achieve what pioli did with a similar sqaud. Overrated coach.
Imo sinisa was the best coach since carlo.. the only one with ballz tho that got him fired in the end. Second pioli
“Allegri would’ve never been able to achieve what pioli did with a similar sqaud. Overrated coach.”
Perhaps it’s true, we can only speculate.
But the truth is achievement wise, Allegri is far more succesfull than Pioli. He did have a world-class squad with Juve where I thaught he underchieved a bit, but he still did better than Conte.
Take Milan away from Pioli’s resume and you’re left with pretty much nothing.
Take peak juve from allegri and it’s also pretty much nothing..
We all know Ibra won that scudeto with Milan not Max
I hope he will play Kjær instead on Gabbia
Wasn’t Kjaer still injured? But if not, Kjaer probably played in 2nd half.
Ah yea, You might be right about that! Its gonna be an emotional send of, saying goodbye to Pioli, Giroud and Kjær. Three big protagonists of the current Milan era. Forza, Grazie, Arrivederci:)