It may only be the third round of the new league phase of the 2024-25 Champions League, but it certainly feels like tonight must be an early turning point for AC Milan against Club Brugge.
La Gazzetta dello Sport (seen below) preview the game this morning, with the headline: ‘The test of fire. Theo and Leao back in the starting line-up, Fonseca looking for European redemption. Hunting for the first Champions League win after two defeats. The coach relaunches Hernandez and Rafa’.
If Milan are still within reach in the Serie A table, in Europe things are different because they are one of the eight teams that have not collected a single point so far. However, the former Lille coach has confidence, as he admitted in his pre-match press conference.
“We hope that the Champions League starts for us now. It’s not a decisive match, but it’s important if we want to move forward: so far we’ve faced two strong opponents like Liverpool and Leverkusen and against the Germans we’ve shown signs of growth. We intend to confirm them with a Brugge team which is a good team,” he said.
With the aim of celebrating the first European victory, Fonseca will turn back to Theo Hernandez and Rafael Leao. Both rested against Udinese, but for different reasons: the Portuguese remained on the bench for 90 minutes due to a technical choice, while the Frenchman served the first of his two-match suspension.
In the last meeting between the two clubs, a goal from Kakà allowed the Rossoneri to win in Belgium in November 2003, but a few weeks earlier Club Brugge had conquered San Siro with the same score (1-0). Everything has changed since then and Fonseca is not a coach who looks too much to the past.
He prefers to focus on the present, especially after the convincing performance against Udinese: “In the first thirty minutes I saw important things in terms of play, then when we were down to ten men, in terms of attitude we were very good. Here, this spirit must be normal in the future because in this way we can get a lot of satisfaction.”
This evening there will be around 55,000 fans at San Siro, among them the Olympians Gabriele Rossetti and Diana Bacosi, but above all the injured Tammy Abraham and Davide Calabria (both hope to recover for Saturday in Bologna).
Instead, Samuel Chukwueze and Noah Okafor will head back to the bench despite being decisive in the Udinese win. The aim is to collect a first UCL clean sheet too, which is why Matteo Gabbia will be back among the starters, with Strahinja Pavlovic keeping his spot.
Balance is the key word, in the defence and in other departments, because three points are needed and a match like this – against a team that already have a Champions League win to their name – cannot be underestimated.