AC Milan made it three wins on the bounce yesterday as they swept aside relegation-threatened Empoli 3-0 at the Stadio Carlo Castellani in the early kick-off.
La Gazzetta dello Sport (as seen below) have analysed the win and Milan’s performance, starting with remaking that the ‘Real Milan are back’. After the wins against Sassuolo and Cagliari a further sign was needed against Empoli, and it arrived.
Milan are becoming a team again under the eyes of Zlatan Ibrahimovic as they are playing with confidence again and scoring goals with ease. They netted three times yesterday after four goals against Cagliari in midweek.
It isn’t just scoring goals that is the positive, though. Ruben Loftus-Cheek was back to his best and probably the man of the match, while Rafael Leao, Tijjani Reijnders and Theo Hernandez – in his new centre-back role – all did well.
Pioli can enjoy watching the young players grow quickly too, like Chaka Traorè who scored again within three minutes of coming on, and with a much better goal than the one in the Coppa Italia match.
Inter and Juventus remain nine and seven points ahead, but in truth Milan have been traveling at their pace for seven rounds. However, there is the usual problem: as soon as the pace drops, and the thread of the game is lost.
There was half an hour of blackout in the second half and only Empoli’s problems in finishing chances prevented the then-closed match from being reopened. If Milan don’t learn to play dirty and manage games, they won’t go far.
Back to the positives. The opener came after 11 minutes after Reijnders elegantly switched flanks, unleashing Leao who beat Ebouehi and laid an intelligent assist to Loftus-Cheek that seemed to surprise Empoli.
In that first goal there was also an element of fragility from the home team, forced to reinvent their line-up due to seven absentees, some being important. Gyasi as a right midfielder isn’t the best, Baldanzi as an attacking midfielder is in physical difficulty, Luperto has to improvise as a full-back.
These are situations that explain but do not justify Empoli’s free fall, only five points and five goals at home, plus worst attack in Serie A (10 goals).
There is little doubt that Milan would have won, but Empoli gave Pioli a good hand, or rather Maleh did as he raised his to block Loftus-Cheek’s overhead kick. The ball scraped his fingers, perhaps his nails, and while the trajectory of the ball did not change a penalty had to be given.
Ebuehi, overwhelmed by Leao, then got injured and in the emergency Andreazzoli invented an interesting move: Ranocchia moved into the midfield and Gyasi at full-back. A more courageous second half is what followed.
Cancellieri came on for Baldanzi, moving to a 4-3-3 in the process, and Jimenez really struggled to deal with the new introduction. Empoli pushed, attacked, had shots, but did not go beyond getting them blocked or generating rebounds.
Milan finished with a flourish. In the 40th minute of the second half Chaka came on for Leao and immediately broke alongside Pulisic’s very fast counter-attack, offering support and then bending a shot around Caprile.
The real milan when we beat inter, juventus, atalanta, also wim scudetto 😀
well, who will be the left back next match since Florenzi injured?
Not injured. Just a precaution.
I will say Pioli and the players have surpassed my expectations for the season so far.
I think Pioli and the players have done a remarkable job to steady the ship after the owners unleashed chaos on the club over the summer.
At the beginning of the season I set:
– the players’ expectations of a top 6 finish;
– Pioli expectations of a top 4 finish and knock out stages of the Champions League but I will give him a pass because of the group we were in and the injuries.
– the owners expectations of a challenge for the Scudetto and latter stages of the Champions League (I might even give them a pass due to the above!).
The reason I distinguish between the players, manager, and owners is because the manager ultimately has a huge impact on the performance of the players, and the owners a huge impact on the performance of the manager.
When Allegri was sacked by Milan (and went on to win three 4 Scudetti with Juve whilst Milan hired the likes of Seedorf) he said that things at Juve allowed him to work in calm environment.
Well Milan was hardly a calm environment this summer when, the same summer that our most influential player was retiring, we sacked Maldini and it seems most of the directors/senior management, sold the player that we were apparently building a team around, changed half the squad around, and signed a load of players, none of whom had any Serie A experience and few of whom had actually won anything.
Off the back of that you bet I’m happy that we are sitting comfortably in third.
Hats off to everyone including the owners. Maybe if we hadn’t all of those injures we’d have done even better!
But the unity between Pioli and the players is really something to be behold.
And for that reason alone we need Pioli to stick around until the summer.
Then we’ll judge…..dun dun dun…..
Bro when we fired Allegri in 2013/14 we had a stable environment in terms of coaches. At the time Allegri was one of the longest serving coach of any team in the Serie A. The reason why Allegri flourished at Juve is because there was a clear talent gap between Juve and the rest of Serie A. We had Constant, Zapata, Montolivo prime banter years players, they had a Prime Pogba, Marchisio, Vidal and Pirlo plus the BBC defence in full swing. You can’t compare those two. Allegri was lying through his teeth. HE was only capable of winning 30% of his games for a while half a season with Milan’s team. Something has to be done and Sassuolo put a nail in his coffin. Seedorf actually did well, had a win % of 50, steadied the ship and almost got us back into Europe, missing out by a single point. If he had a few more games we might have made Europe. But Allegri at the time didn’t know how to develop young players, he was accustomed to having Ibra and Silva bail him out which he no longer had. Even at this Juve, yes he’s playing youth by force but he still has a 60m striker. Not saying environment didn’t play a role it obviously did but quality of squads are quite different too. Its probably a combination of both
I supported the decision to sack Allegri at the time (but then we ended up with Seedorf and didn’t hire a proper manager until Pioli (I’m being harsh on Montella and Mihajlović (RIP)).
There wasn’t a talent gap. Juve won titles with Milan’s rejects for god sake (Pirlo, Matri and Borriello).
Juve were just more stable. It allowed them to build solid foundations around the BBC defence (two of whom were bang average and would have failed (and Bonucci did in fact fail) at Milan). Meanwhile Milan changed their CBs (and every other position) every transfer window.
At that time Milan and Juve could’ve swapped squads and Juve still would’ve won.
Look at Napoli this season. They lose their manager and 1 key player and they go from one of the greatest Scudetto winning teams to currently 9th!
That’s football.
“There wasn’t a talent gap. Juve won titles with Milan’s rejects for god sake (Pirlo, Matri and Borriello).” I agree and disagree at the same time if that makes any sense. Pirlo’s impact was much much greater than the other two and he wasn’t exactly washed up (maybe he wasnt able to be effective in his game given how bad our midfield was at the time). But we casted him aside because we didn’t have proper vision and lacked money. Galliani had his lunch taken from him every transfer window.
The rest i agree with. Stability is a huge factor to success imo. And also I don’t think anyone else could even do a better job than Pioli right now with all the issues facing the team
Well actually, this is my first time commenting here, only read through but I’m highly impressed with your comment which made me comment.
Yes Pioli deserve all our praises cause he’s doing excellently well except for some costly errors but I guess if we continue on this form and with the integration of the Primavera players we can finish the season on a high note.
Teracciano will play the left back, beat Roma to get a bit credit from me.
The feel-good factor is definitely back. Some of it is based on real positives like the integration of young players, players finding/regaining form and/or fire, and some important returns from injury. On the other hand, one could argue we’ve had an easy run of games, similar to how we started the season, only to be humbled by tougher tests. I think Pioli has done really well despite some big mistakes but for me, he’s limited by the midfield personnel. He still hasn’t found the right formula and despite improvements, the midfield still looks unbalanced with a lot of players having to adjust to new roles that they don’t seem to be suited for.
The main issue this season was it was sold as the next stage of our project when in fact it was a restart and the end of the Maldini, Massara, Boban era. That being said, after all the struggles, a trophy and a top four finish would be an acceptable end to the season.
Nah Milan so lucky to be 3rd, should be 10th or lower, worst top 4 team ever
Why dont they understand there is no Milan without Maldini and Saudi