AC Milan took care of business on Saturday night as they beat Empoli 2-0 at the Stadio Carlo Castellani after what was a second half full of drama.
The first major talking point came when Fikayo Tomori was sent off for a second yellow card despite it looking like Lorenzo Colombo – who he tackled – was offside. Luca Marianucci then got a red after a kick-out at Santiago Gimenez to restore numerical parity minutes later.
Rafael Leao came off the bench at half-time along with Christian Pulisic and Gimenez, and it was the Portuguese winger who gave Milan the lead with a header at the far post after Christian deep cross.
Then, the USMNT captain Pulisic teed up Gimenez for his first goal since arriving, a finish that showed why he is the €35m man as he cut inside onto his preferred left foot and curled a beautiful shot inside the far post.
It was a big three points given that there wasn’t any help from teams around Milan in the table dropping points barring Bologna. Below is Rohit Rajeev‘s tactical analysis of the game.
Effective pressing
According to @markstatsbot Milan’s PPDA (Passes Per Defensive Action) number was a very low at 6.9. PPDA is the number of opposition passes allowed outside of the pressing team’s own defensive third, divided by the number of defensive actions by the pressing team outside of their own defensive third.
The lower number the better therefore, and this means that Milan’s pressing was very good. It showed in the first minute when Joao Felix and Alex Jimenez pressed Marianucci to win the ball back and counter, which led to Tammy Abraham going down inside the box but nothing was given.
Felix’s understanding of spaces meant that he was given a free role by Conceicao and he caused trouble for Empoli as he was difficult to man mark and his deft touches opened up spaces.
Jimenez allowed Theo Hernandez more freedom as he would track back and cover the spaces left open, but then when the chance had presented it to him he couldn’t find the final pass.
Conceicao’s ‘experiment’ of playing two defensive wide men didn’t work quite as planned, but it must also be noted that Leao and Pulisic were not at 100% before the game so it might have been out of necessity.
Whenever Strahinja Pavlovic got the ball was asked to dribble forward to try and break the man-marking from Roberto D’Avera’s side.
Changes at the interval
Three substitutions were made at the break which says a lot about what Conceicao thought to that point. Pulisic, Leao and Gimenez all came on, and the combinations to unlock the defence arrived.
Finally the compact Empoli rearguard were tested and stretched by the four forward players. As seen below Theo, slid in a good through ball for Leao down a channel that had opened up.
When Empoli got their red card it created a gap between Goglichidze and Gyasi, which meant they didn’t have proper protection at the back post which gave Leao a free header.
Then for the second goal, Gimenez won his aerial duel to give a flick-on to Pulisic before he got the ball back to Gimenez for the goal. This kind of dynamic forward play is exactly what Conceicao hopes to see more of, and what the fans have been waiting for.
Stats
Empoli had zero scoring chances and zero shots on target all game, which led to Conceicao’s apt assessment to take risks in search of the goal.
What is concerning however is how Milan only had one successful cross out of nine (one is which led to goal).
It needs to be said that Empoli’s goalkeeper did a terrible job guarding the back post – Pulisic’s cross was a soft floater that hung in the air. In the replays you can see Empoli GK Vasquez move over from where Pulisic was crossing the ball towards the backpost, but he STOPS at about mid-goal, and just stares and watches as the ball continue on floating towards the back post. A better and more astute goalkeeper would have realized that any header would have had to go towards the back post, and there was plenty of time for the GK to keep going to cover that space, but Vasquez simply made a mistake by stopping instead of continuing to move across to cover the back post.
If you watch replays of the SuperCoppa Italia semifinal with Inter, in that match, Pulisic made a nearly identical cross to the backpost and Morata hit a nearly identical header into that opening at the backpost, but Inter’s far superior GK, Jan Sommer, moved much morely quickly and further to cover that space and so was able to block that shot. The point here is that this was a stoppable shot by Leao, but Empoli’s GK made a positioning error and so was not in position to stop the shot.
So yeah, great goals but, remember, this is Empoli, with an Empolis quality goalkeeper and defenders, and not Inter or one of the top 6 teams in Serie A.
That’s right, she is flying slowly and slowly in slow motion. If she traveled like that in reality, Vasquez would have reached her 🤣🤣🤣