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Theo at his best and ‘Il Pittore’ at work: All the key stats from Empoli-Milan

By Oliver Fisher -

AC Milan got all three points in their first league game of 2024 and they scored three goals in the process, comfortably beating Empoli in the end at the Stadio Carlo Castellani.

Milan had a two-goal lead going into the break after Ruben Loftus-Cheek’s lovely strike put Milan ahead in the opening quarter of an hour before Olivier Giroud converted a penalty to double the lead.

After netting in the Coppa Italia on Tuesday night for his first senior goal for the Rossoneri, Chaka Traore came off the bench to add a third in the closing stages and make it a comfortable win in the end.

It is a win which opens up a bit of space after Fiorentina and Bologna dropped points earlier in the round, but Juventus and Inter above both won. You can read our player ratings here, while below are some of the best stats…

An overall look

The general stats suggest that Milan were lucky to win by such a margin, with just a 1.80 Expected Goals tally compared to Empoli’s 0.96, which essentially infers – based on quality of chances – that 1-2 would have been a fairer scoreline.

The Rossoneri did have the bulk of the possession (65%) and while they were outshot 17 to 13 in total, Pioli’s men had six shots on target to the two that the hosts managed. In terms of big chances, there was only one and it went to Milan.

Back to his best

After his outstanding two-assist performance against Cagliari at centre-back in the Coppa Italia on Tuesday night, Theo Hernandez was once again exceptional.

He played all 90 minutes and he made a number of timely blocks inside the box to deny Empoli (3), particularly during their second half spells of pressure.

The Frenchman had 6 clearances and completed 90% of his passes, while his 6/8 duels won show that he was up for the fight and the box-to-box dribble he completed ended with a shot that was sadly straight at the goalkeeper.

Il Pittore at work

Yacine Adli was deployed in a deeper-lying midfield role once again, and he seems to be enjoying the run of opportunities.

What was striking was how much the Franco-Algerian wanted to get on the ball: he had 112 touches in the 90 minutes he played, completing 92 passes (out of 97 attempted, an accuracy of 95%).

He showed his impressive distribution too with 5/5 long balls completed, with some defensive hustle shown as well (4/10 duels won, and 3 tackles).

A couple from Opta

We round things off with two rather interesting stats from OptaPaolo. The first concerns Milan’s English link, one that has in theory been present since Herbert Kilpin founded the club in 1899.

After Loftus-Cheek got his second Serie A goal for the Rossoneri today and with Fikayo Tomori already having three to his name, Milan have two 2+ English goalscorers in a league season for the first time in nearly 40 years.

Then there is the evergreen Olivier Giroud, who reached 10 goals in all competition. It is the 14th season in a row that he has done so, which is the longest streak of any player in the ‘top five’ European leagues.

The details

Empoli (4-3-1-2): Caprile; Ebuehi (28′ Ranocchia), Ismajli, Walukiewicz, Luperto; Gyasi, Grassi (74′ Marin), Maleh; Baldanzi (57′ Cancellieri); Cambiaghi, Caputo (74′ Maldini). Subs: Berisha, Perisan; Indragoli; Destro, Shpendi, Sodero.

AC Milan (4-3-3): Maignan; Calabria (70′ Bartesaghi), Kjær (84′ Gabbia), Hernández, Florenzi (35′ Jiménez); Loftus-Cheek (70′ Musah), Adli, Reijnders; Pulisic, Giroud, Leão (84′ Traorè). Subs: Mirante, Nava; Simić; Romero, Zeroli; Jović.

Referee: La Penna from Roma.
Goals: 11′ Loftus-Cheek (M), 31′ pen. Giroud (M), 88′ Traorè (M).
Booked: 41′ Calabria (M), 54′ Jiménez (M), 81′ Marin (E).

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Tags AC Milan Empoli Milan

21 Comments

  1. Adli has some crazy stats here, and maybe should get a higher rating? 95% pass accuracy and wasn’t afraid to move forward. No, defending is not his forte but this speaks for itself.

    1. And its not everytime that when a player is beaten by an attacker we can say his defending is poor, there are some attacking movements that are so brilliant that anyone can be beaten, ofcourse there are incidences of poor defending, but not everytime, generally the problem is when we analyse our teams’ performance, we completely disregard the opponent’s brilliance, we never acknowledge the superiority or the good moments of the opponent, and thats how it is with fans of all teams, ofcourse there are poor perfomances, but again not everytime

      1. Empoli is in a battle right now to not be relegated. When it happens to teams they get desperate and throw everything they can. To me it’s team like this that are actually quite dangerous and people underestimate them.

  2. And some were slamming us when we were saying theo was the man of the match and adli played a good game, they said only goals and assists matter

      1. Indeed, but the Adli Fanclub won’t ever quit; he’s the GOAT for them. They can’t see his shortcomings. It’s a case of collective blindness.

        1. He’s playing out of position, essentially learning a new one. It’s a learning curve. As such it’s understandable that there will be kinks to iron out. Considering, he’s holding up good. Patience is needed.

        2. Im not an adli fan, im an ac milan fan, im talking about the empoli game, i know very well that adli is not yet a good dm, he is too weak defensively, he is only playing because there is noone else available, but we shouldn’t use presumptions to rate players in a match, when he did well just admit that he did well on that game, saying he played well vs empoli doesnt make him a super talent, actually this was my firstt time here to comment that he played well and pretty aware that he will commit a costly defensive error in the next games, but on this game he was good, simple

        3. “Indeed, but the Adli Fanclub won’t ever quit; he’s the GOAT for them. They can’t see his shortcomings. It’s a case of collective blindness.”

          LOL!!!! NO ONE and I absolutly mean NO ONE here has ever said Adli was perfect or didn’t have shortcoming. NO ONE! But the fact still is though… He’s far more exciting to watch than backpass-Krunic and Adli will actually learn to defend better even if he’s forced to play out of position.

    2. Only goals and assists matter? LOL. I bet that’s the Krunic fans talking, right? You know the far more complete and better player than Adli. The king of back-passes with one goal contribution per season (max). 😀 😀 😀 😀 😀

  3. Any day Adli doesn’t cause the opponent to score is a decent day for him. He tried hard to do it, almost conceding a PK, barely outside the box. Maybe if he tries harder next time, he will cause the PK. Go for it, Adli! It will make things more fun; you know, it’s boring to win 3-0 and keep a clean sheet. Also he allowed his man to cross a very dangerous ball, and had other defensive failures as usual. But hey, he had some pass accuracy to the side and back (and a few decent ones forward), so, great, what a great player!

    1. And some people are obsessed with bashing Adli. So, he stopped an opponent before he got into the penalty box and that’s now the most horrific crime a Milan player has ever done? LOL. He did well to foul him BEFORE they got inside the box. Then it would have gotten dangerous.

      Funny how the Krunic-loving-Adli-bashing-Adli-haters are now picking on the guy playing out-of-position and make a huge deal out of one single foul he made. It’s not like Rino Gattuso or Ambrosini ever committed fouls near the penalty box, right? 🙂 And those were the masters of DMs.

      1. AND OMG, HE ALLOWED AN OPPONENT TO CROSS A DANGEROUS BALL!!! He should be in jail for life for that!!! Krunic would have NEVER allowed that to happen. NEVER!!!!

    2. Watch the sequence of the first goal, where exactly it started, that was a good team goal, watch again where it all started, then you will understand how it is exciting to have a ball-player playing deep, every recovery is an opportunity for a quick attack and catch the opponents out of defensive positions, bennacer is absent, adli is the available guy for ac milan at the moment, actually he has made himself available for the role, when he plays well and we win convincingly, why cant you just be happy and enjoy

  4. Adli is learning how to keep possession and how to be a defender in the midfield. In my opinion his lack of physicality and timing is what will be his weakness for the rest of his career.

    He is compensating for the poor physicality with learning how not to keep hold of the ball for too long. But that isn’t a perfect method, plus even with physical players they get dispossessed at some point and I have seen that with Kessie and Krunic. Bith of them lost the ball in bad places and as such I cannot think that one is better than the other. So Adli is doing well in compensating for his lack of being built like a brick.

    His other problem is the biggest issue that a really good CDM does not have is his timing. He commits to tackles that he losses out on and those tackles are done in the worst places on the pitch. Does this happen all the time, no, but it happens enough time whereby he cannot be trusted to do that role for this team.

    I always believe that you can train a player to be a defender but its impossible to train them to be a better attacker. So Adli has the chance to get better at being a good defender. So I think he is doing a good enough job, but if he doesn’t improve his timing and decision making on when to tackle he will have to go.

    But other than that he is a really good passer. He has a lot of forward passes in his performances and these passes are dangerous passes. His interceptions and disposing of the ball from attacking players in the midfield is really good. So why the hate. He does well and he is way better in terms of his attitude and commitment than some of the other midfielders who have played for this club. These are huge bonuses.

    1. “I always believe that you can train a player to be a defender but its impossible to train them to be a better attacker.”

      You nailed the fact here 100%. Defending is far easier to learn than making yourself useful in the attacking plays.

  5. Thanks for the analysis!

    I’ll stand by my two concerns around poor passing in terms of crispness and leaving the player passed to in a good spot.

    The second is his availability in the building from the back.

    Both of these, as many say, can be trained up. This is my hope as well. But for now I’d like to see him coming in frequently whenever we have games in the bag or against weaker sides when we need to rotate others.

    Incidently I love Musah but hold the same thoughts for him as well. I expect him to be coming off the bench when Bennacer comes back.

  6. relax guys, adli is learning to play as regista
    Its a difficult position to play, even Pirlo got heavy judged.

    thats why adli is not our main 11 yet, his decision making is still weak. or u guys prefer krunic who already at his potential limit?

    this is not a video game, u have to work with what u have

  7. Krunic fan club, Calabria fan club, Adli fan club…

    What about 60 millions wasted on new non functional midfield and 28 millions wasted on one-trick-worse-than-Antony-pony Chukwueze?

    Why don’t you b*tch about that?

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