Olivier Giroud’s night went from ecstasy to frustration as he watched his side throw away the two-goal lead against Napoli that his goals had given them.
Tuttosport (via MilanNews) write this morning that Giroud ‘goes wild’ when he faces Napoli, based on his performances at the Stadio Diego Armando Maradona both last night and last season.
He scored two near identical headers but unfortunately they were not enough to give his Milan a much-needed victory after two defeats in a row against Juventus and PSG.
What ruined the Frenchman’s evening was not only the comeback suffered, but also Stefano Pioli’s choice to remove him towards the end to put Luka Jovic on, with the former Chelsea player not taking his coach’s decision well at all.
The positives are that Giroud finally returned to scoring after almost two months without a goal, while he had not even scored a goal from open play since the first day of the season against Bologna. His confidence seemed to return, and last night he demonstrated once again that he can still be very useful.
He hoped he could be useful until the end of the match, potentially even taking the match ball home with him, but Pioli chose to give new energy to the attack by bringing on Jovic.
Giroud’s reaction to the substitution was quite strong (as was that of Rafael Leao), even if he then spoke more calmly after the game: “I came off, but I thought I could still help the team, then I respect the coach, I calmed down after five minutes, but I didn’t want to come off.”
Two of our midfielders were on a yellow at that point.. Random substitutions from Pioli, he’s lucky we didn’t get a red card or lose the match