Milan welcomed the Giallorossi to San Siro after the winter break and there was a partial crisis for the home side with the team missing all of its main 3 defenders in Kjaer, Romagnoli and Tomori due to corona and long term injuries.
With a makeshift backline, Milan came out with flying colours defeating a distraught Roma who seemed out of idea and after 90 minutes were down to 9 men with a big home game against Juventus coming.
Here are few of the noteworthy tactical points
PRESSING
Milan are largely identified as a pressing side and pressing was part of the team that played on Thursday. To the naked eye the second goal seemed like a goal borne from an individual error that came from clever pressing by blocking the passing lane.
Comparing Milan and Roma’s pressing stats Milan made 139 pressures (attempts to press the ball) against Roma’s 145. However Milan’s success % from pressing was 41% while Roma’s was only 33.8%.
For Roma they pressed only in their defensive half and not high up the pitch which speaks to a classic Jose set up. Milan meanwhile pressed mostly in the middle of the pitch (56 times)
4-1-4-1 AND DIAZ-KRUNIC PARTNERSHIP
With Kessie and Bennacer gone for AFCON, Milan lined up in the double pivot with Krunic and Tonali . However there was a slight difference in their approach. Tonali would sit back more deeper guarding against counter attack while Krunic would push up to join Diaz and Milan would line up in a 4-1-4-1 formation.
This gave a bit more freedom to Diaz to sit deeper and reciver the balls from Tonali or Maignan and then find his man. This also gave numerical superiority for Milan in the midfield battle given how Roma fielded a 3-5-2
MESSIAS Vs VINA
Milan were always dependent on left wing for Creativity but with Leao injured and Messias fielded on the right, Pioli focused on the right. Identifying Vina as the weakness in the 3-5-2/5-3-2 lineup of Roma, Messias was tasked with taking on Vina and beating up. Messias was able to do this on many occasions even drawing a frustrated challenge from Vina but went unpunished.
QUALITY OVER QUANTITY
Milan had 3 shots on target out of 17 they made in the match while Roma had 5 out of 11 shots. This maybe speaks about how Roma was taking their chances. However the xG or expected goals tells a different story. Milan’s expected goals stood at 2.9 while Roma’s expected goal was 0.8 which speaks to a superior quality of chances that were created.
Milan also had 23 Shot Creating Actions (SCA) while Roma had only 9 which once again points to the disparity in the control of the match.
CONCLUSION
Milan put their covid issues behind them as they dominated San Siro and showed Roma some real quality high octane football while Roma were kept at bay for large parts of the game.
Losing 2 key players through suspension against Juventus would be a real challenge but in Mourinho never count the Giallorossi out.
Milan travel to Venezia with sky high confidence and best of all with all of their injured attacks back and some of them firing.
The Milan Blog 