A trip to Torino beckoned for Milan after their historic win at Juventus in a turn of fortunes as Milan gained the upper hand in the race for Champions League spot for next season. With teams playing simultaneously, Milan had the task of winning at another stadium in Turin, the Grand Torino.
Flashbacks of Milan’s 2-0 loss haunted the fans but the morale boost after the 3- victory at the Allianz had Milan fans positive.
LINE-UP
Milan fielded a weakened line-up without the evergreen Zlatan Ibrahimovic who was injured mid-way through the Juventus match and Saelemaekers whose accumulation of yellow cards earned him a suspension.
For Torino, Davide Nicola benched star striker Belotti and their key players such as Rincon, Verdi and Sanabria perhaps keeping in mind they have Spezia at the weekend, which was a more important game.
MORE OR LESS THE SAME FROM TURIN
Pioli stuck to the same game-plan that brought him the success against Juve. He fielded Diaz, Hakan and Castillejo as the triumvirate behind the roaming striker Rebic who ran the channels and hustled Torino’s back 3. Pioli struck the right balance with his teammate chosing caution over aggression (before the match) where he was content for the opposition to push high up while Milan pressed and countered and Torino took the bait.
THE PLAN TO OVERCOME THE 3-5-2
With a 4-2-3-1 Milan’s midfield often seemed to get overloaded whenever opposition teams play a 5 man midfield especially on the center of the pitch.
To counter this Pioli as I mentioned above fielded Hakan and Diaz, 2 attacking midfielders leaving the left wing vacant. Whenever Milan won the ball Diaz, Hakan and Castillejo would dart forward occupying space rather than an assigned position. Whenever Milan built from the back one of Hakan or Diaz would drop into midfield while one of them stay top to support Rebic. This is a clear example of Milan’s “fluid formation” setup where the team principles are centered on zones rather than positions.
One of the key features of Pioli’s game in Fiorentina was the formation of Passing Diamonds. Milenkovic would push up and with 2 midfielders and a forward, fiorentina would form a passing diamond. Milan given so much space by Torino, were easily forming them all over the pitch to beat the press
MILAN’S PRESSING
One of the key ideas behind Pioli’s Milan had been Milan’s pressing and Milan pressed Torino out of the park.
From horizontal pressing to the build up from the 3rd goal from Kessie Milan forced Torino into errors and moved the ball with quick vertical passes
It can be seen from the pressing stats how Milan were so effective in pressing. Kessie topped in pressure % ( the amount of pressing done which was successful). Kessie topped the charts with 83.3% with Rebic coming 2nd with 50% and Kjaer/Tomori coming a joint 3rd.
TORINO’S GAME PLAN AND GAP IN DEFENSE
Initially Torino’s idea was to defend in a 5-2-3 formation isolating Bennacer with pressing traps and defend deep but with Milan taking the lead they had to push forward.
Torino usually countered through either Simone Zaza or Wilfred Singo trying to take advantage of the space left by the advancing Theo. To push Milan deep into their own half and press, Nicola had Bremer overlap and join the midfield to try and press Hakan along with joining the attack. Mandragora would compensate for the numbers sitting deep and acting as the anchor
A huge problem torino faced was the gap between Torino’s Center-back and the Left Center-Back which got breached more than thrice ultimately ending in Lyanco fouling Samu Castillejo for the penalty.
TORINO’S MISTAKE
One of the main questions from yesterday’s match I had was why did Torino press up so high even when they were 4-0 down ? Usually teams that chase a score of a 2-1 or a 3-1 or even a 3-2 press high up the pitch leaving only 1 defender behind but Torino were pressing Milan even when they were 5-0 down.
You can see from below chart that Torino’s line was as high 60 metres up the match, like how a star studded team chasing a game against minnows would play. All Milan had to do was wait for Torino to come into their half, break up play and launch quick counters with vertical passes.
THE FALSE 9
One of the advantages of a false 9 is that the defender does not have a fixed target to mark and thus it causes confusion and the defender to be drawn out of position. The danger is that intelligent defenders can easily nullify the false 9 (unless he is a Messi or similar) and make him redundant.
However against Torino the false 9, Ante Rebic, ran rings around Torino’s defense. He drew defenders out, scored a hat trick and crossed well for giving an assist for Theo.
ATHELTIC STATS
Here are Milan’s athletic stats for the game
Rafael Leao’s 34 kmph seems to have been the run he made to catch up to Meite’s forward pass and put it on a plate for Rebic to score.
As usual kessie covers the most distance in the game, the engine that he has been kessie has been by far Milan’s best player this season.
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