AC Milan returned from Supercoppa Italiana action hoping to kick start a push towards the Champions League places, but were held to a 1-1 draw by Cagliari.
In a remarkably similar fashion to earlier in the season, Milan followed up a huge win by drawing with the relegation-threatened Sardinians. Last year it was after the 3-1 win at Real Madrid that they drew 3-3 on the island, and on Saturday night they let a lead slip again.
After a first half that was all bark and no real bite from the Rossoneri, Alvaro Morata’s close-range finish in the 51st minute seemed to have put Sergio Conceicao’s side on their way to an important three points, after Lazio and Juventus had drawn prior in the round.
However, Zortea equalised just four minutes after the opener with what was a sloppy goal to concede. Late chances were spurned as Milan missed the opportunity to close the gap, and below is Rohit Rajeev’s tactical analysis from the game.
Chance creation
Milan created an xG of 2.7 against Cagliari which simply translated meant that Milan created a plethora of chances and should have won the game.
Manoeuvres were an important part of the chance creation. In the clip below, Alvaro Morata pulls the centre-back wide apart making space for Tijjani Reijnders/Christian Pulisic to occupy and then cut open then Cagliari defence.
— Rohit Rajeev (@MilanYouthFocus) January 13, 2025
Another way opportunities were generated was from the third-man runs. Man-marking can be broken when runs are made and players – especially opposition forwards – are not adept defenders. Davide Calabria makes a good third-man runs with Pulisic and Yunus Musah combining to find him in space.
— Rohit Rajeev (@MilanYouthFocus) January 13, 2025
A player on each flank stayed wide to stretch the Cagliari’s man-marking to create half-spaces to exploit.
Making runs behind the defence with clever positioning – like how Pulisic does before the tap-in for Morata – was another way for the Milan players to shrug off markers.
The obvious issues
Now despite all of this the Rossoneri still didn’t get over the line, and that is because Conceicao has some problems to work on.
One is Morata’s positioning. One thing Milan missed when they had Giroud was that they didn’t have the ability to build play centrally because Giroud always tended to try and get in the box quickly.
However, while Morata had the speed to cover up the distance to goal, with his position he would often position himself in vague areas where his threat isn’t as high. We can see here below that he is far from goal while Musah is occupying the centre-forward position.
One thing Milan had going well under Fonseca was set-pieces. Goals in games like against Real Madrid and Inter came from them, plus Pulisic’s crazy Olimpico.
However, Conceicao has re-jigged the entire setup and it seems to have had a negative impact on the threat that they generate.
— Rohit Rajeev (@MilanYouthFocus) January 13, 2025
Lack of final ball has been a plague. Yes, it’s extremely difficult to get the ball through the legs of defenders when the goal mouth is so packed but that’s where quality is shown.
Reijnders – as shown in the screenshot below – couldn’t get even get a corner and his cross bounced off the defender then off him to go for a goal kick.
An interesting metric
Here we introduce PsxG. Post Shot xG is a metric used by data analysts to measure the quality of the shot. It is a score given from 0-1 based on the probability of that shot going in and mainly has two uses.
In terms of attacking play, it helps us to gauge the quality of the shots and how well players are shooting. For example Milan’s best chance (aside from the Morata goal) was Tammy Abraham’s chance with his left foot.
The opportunity carried an xG of 0.46 but his psxG was only 0.39. In layman’s terms the quality of the shot was not good enough considering the simplicity of the chance he got. I.e., he should have buried it.
Another moment fell to Pulisic, with the chance carrying an xG of 0.48 but only a psxG of 0.21 which means that he should have done a lot better with it.
At the other end, it assesses the quality of shots kept out by the goalkeeper as each shot has its own ‘level of difficulty’ so to speak, and psxG can show under or over-performance.
Maignan’s numbers for the season are interesting. He has conceded a psxG (in Serie A) of 14.5 while he has conceded 18 goals which means, in simple terms, he has conceded 3.5 goals more than he should have based on the quality of the shots he has faced.
The Frenchman would no doubt like to have that Zortea shot back, which skidded across the surface and squirmed under his dive, but moments like that can turn a good night into a bad one such are the fine margins of football.
