In the concluding article of a three part series profiling the Italian teams battling for this season’s Champions League, Michelle Bonsu inspects the prospects of AC Milan. If you missed the other parts, make sure you check out yesterday’s article about Juventus and the first post of the series about Napoli.
AC Milan had a unprecedented poor start to the season last term—the worst in over 80 years—but through a combination of pure grit and sometimes luck, managed to recover from flirting with relegation to sneaking into third place and qualifying for this year’s Champions League. They then had to get to the group stages through a two-legged playoff with PSV Eindhoven, which they did so after drawing their first match and winning the second at their home ground in a match whose score-line was deceptively in favour of the Rossoneri.
In any case, the same can certainly be said about their opening group stage clash with Celtic. While they managed to defeat the Bhoys 2-0, it must be noted that Massimiliano Allegri’s men struggled to break down their resolute opponents, as they headed into the match with nearly an entire squad absent through injury, including players such as Kaka, Stephan El Shaarawy, Ignazio Abate, and Riccardo Montolivo. But, as is the interesting and unpredictable nature of football, their fortunes improved—much like what occurred three days prior in a league fixture with Torino when they came back from 2-0 down to tie in the span of ten minutes—when defender Emilio Izaguirre forgot which side he was playing for and turned Cristián Zapata’s attempt into his own net via a deflection. And, four minutes later, Sulley Muntari, who had bundled in his team’s first goal in the Torino match, did it again, showing that indeed, luck can strike twice to seal the game for his struggling side.
Luck again favoured Milan in their match-up with Ajax, which, to be honest, was largely a snooze-fest that, had one missed the entire first half, it really wouldn’t have been a great disservice whatsoever. The Dutch giants, still licking their chops from their 4-0 humiliating at the hands of Barcelona controlled the first half but really had nothing much to show for it, but the Rossoneri were far, far worse. In fact, it appeared that they were mostly in slow motion, more focused on sitting deep and defending; with Mario Balotelli cutting a frustrated figure up front with little support from co-strikers Robinho and later on, Alessandro Matri. To make matters worse, when they actually did get the ball, there was no kind of creative spark emanating from the Milan midfield whatsoever.
One would certainly love to be a fly on the wall inside the Rossoneri’s locker-room, because after the half-time break, the whole team appeared to awaken from their first-half slumber and actually came prepared to do their jobs. The ball actually began to move around more, giving Balotelli the opportunity to actually put pressure on Ajax’s defense, but due to a lack of verve they were still lacking that incisive final ball to start making their chances count for something.
Ajax fans will surely be still gnashing their teeth about the result—probably like Torino fans—because they thought they’d made out for all three points after Stefano Denswil took advantage of some poor marking by the Rossoneri and headed home from six yards out. But, no; four minutes later, the referee pointed to the spot after determining that defender Mike van der Hoorn had fouled Balotelli and the Italian international had no difficulty converting the ensuing spot kick to – depending on whom you ask – steal two points from Ajax or earn one for the Rossoneri ahead of their match-up with Barcelona (for the umpteenth time, it seems) in a few weeks.
They might be in second place in their group with four points, but certainly even the most die-hard fan has to admit that they have been very, very lucky so far and it’s not likely that this run of good fortune will continue. Their performance so far over their first two fixtures has been at times just simply dismal, and while they might have the most points earned so far compared with Juventus and Napoli, all one has to look at is their poor run in the league so far (eight points from seven games and well off the Champions League, or even Europa League places) to see why their showings so far have been, simply put, the complete inverse of the beautiful game—just plain old ugly.
Last season was commonly referred to as their “Year Zero”, and they managed to qualify from their group after posting the exact same result—four points—from their first two matches by squeaking past Russian outfit Zenit St. Petersburg with a mere eight points (versus the Russians’ seven). So, given that, it is certainly feasible that the Rossoneri will dust themselves off and really start picking things up as they’ve faced off against Lionel Messi & Co. enough times in the past to recognize what they have to do in order to get some points from their two matches versus the Blaugrana.
But knowing what to do, and actually putting it into effect are two different things. And given that last year was supposed to be the one in which they hit rock-bottom, let’s just hope that Milan, for the sake of their supporters, will be the case of the ugly duckling turning into a swan over their next four group stage fixtures.
The post The good, the bad, and the ugly, part III: AC Milan appeared first on Proven Quality.