Whether Milan will be able to oppose something to such a formidable Napoli is a big question. But what can be said for sure – we are waiting for an amazing Italian confrontation, in which the fans will see a very bright game from both teams.
As many as 11 years have not seen Milan in the quarter-finals of the Champions League. During this time, ten head coaches worked in the once grandiose of European football, and Zlatan Ibrahimovic managed to leave, play in three clubs and return back. Milan still needs a lot of time to return to its former greatness, but the red-blacks made an important intermediate step in this direction on Wednesday. The task before the Italians was simple: not to lose to a team that had not been able to score against either Wolverhampton or Sheffield United over the previous week.
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Game against Tottenham
However, Tottenham was still dangerous. This season, this is the most unstable club of the English “big six”: it can easily defeat the leader, and then give way to an outsider. So Stefano Pioli did not pay attention to the latest results.
Antonio Conte finally overcame all health problems and returned to the Tottenham bench, but he did not make any major changes in the squad. But Pioli again prepared a special plan for the “spurs” – if at the “San Siro” he gave the task to Chier to personally patronize Kane, now he has switched to a hybrid scheme.
In many ways, Pioli was helped by the recovery of Meignan. Milan’s main goalkeeper has not played since September due to a serious injury, but returned to action at the end of February, and now the coaching staff can once again use the strengths of the Frenchman. Meignan plays well with his feet, and with both, so in the match with Tottenham he played the role of point guard. The goalkeeper constantly found himself with the ball outside the penalty area and gave away long passes to the partners. As a result, Meignan entered the top three in terms of the number of passes made in Milan.
Milan, due to the goalkeeper’s maneuvers, could switch between the formations – at the start of the attacks, the defense clearly lined up in a line of four, and without the ball, the guests rebuilt and reflected the Tottenham 3-4-3 scheme.
Guests’ tactics worked. In the first match, the Milanese won with a score of 1:0, so they first of all had to keep Tottenham. The unhurried pace of the game in the first half was dictated by the guests themselves, hence the negligible number of dangerous moments before the break. Relatively close to the goal were only Emerson and Messias.
Milan’s actions were understandable, because time worked for him, but Tottenham played indistinctly. From the 23rd to the 60th minute, the hosts never even struck on goal – neither a positional attack, nor a counterattack, nor a set piece brought anything. Only the appearance of Pedro Porro as a substitute revived the game – the Spaniard for some reason remained on the bench after a good game with Wolverhampton and after the 60th minute he clearly refreshed the right edge.
Conte rarely abandons his favorite 3-X-X block even during matches, but here circumstances forced him: from the 70th minute, Tottenham had all four main attacking units on the field – Kane, Son Heung Min, Kulusevski and Richarlison. The arrangement at the same time mutated into something similar to 4-2-4. It is logical that in the second half Tottenham took the lead in possession of the ball, only Milan easily broke most of the attacks. Spurs under Conte are good at counterplay, but they really don’t know how to open a rich organized defense.
Such a meeting could not end calmly – Romero lost his nerve in the 78th minute, and in one episode he received both an injury and a second yellow card for a hard foul on Theo Hernandez. In the minority, Tottenham were completely sour, but they still found strength for one good standard – in the third added minute, Kane remembered his best qualities and almost scored with his head, but Menyan eliminated the threat in a spectacular jump.
The match ended without goals, with Milan going further on aggregate. And hardly anyone will say that it is undeserved.
Whether Milan will be able to oppose something to such a formidable Napoli is a big question. But what can be said for sure – we are waiting for an amazing Italian confrontation, in which the fans will see a very bright game from both teams.