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Massimiliano Allegri made it clear some time ago that he wants goals from his midfielders, and so far they haven’t arrived.
As La Gazzetta dello Sport recall, the first warning dates back to early December, following the Coppa Italia match against Lazio when he said after the game: “The midfielders are lacking goals.” It was partially to explain the negative evening but also served as a general warning.
More than a month has passed, but the issue is far from resolved. Milan can count on Christian Pulisic’s goalscoring streak (Florence aside), on Rafael Leao’s exponentially increasing goal-scoring average, and on Christopher Nkunku’s recent resurgence, but not on the contribution of the midfield.
Midfielders dry
Back on December 4, the day of the Lazio game, four midfielders had scored: Youssouf Fofana, Ruben Loftus-Cheek, Luka Modric and Samuele Ricci all had one goal each. Together, they accounted for 16.6% of the total goals. Six weeks later, only a rocket from Adrien Rabiot was added.
This brings the midfield to five goals out of the 35 total, and the department’s impact drops from 16.6% to 14.3%. Considering that the midfield is objectively the most complete and best-planned sector of the entire team, this figure is low.
It also stands out now, unlike a month and a half ago, given that the team are struggling more than they should. Milan remain the third-best team in the league in terms of goals scored, but this is a misleading statistic: several goals are still missing, the result of often glaring waste.
Fofana’s slip against Genoa is a symbol of his mistakes in front of goal. Loftus-Cheek, on the other hand, just can’t seem to get back to the (high) levels seen in the second half of the 2023-24 season, hampered by some physical issues and a competitive shyness that shouldn’t be his trademark.
Rabiot isn’t at his best either, after the soleus injury that sidelined him for a month right at the peak of his powers, but he plays alongside Modric, who has the second-most minutes in the squad this season and cannot be expected to score a lot from a regista role.
As for the substitutes Samuele Ricci and Ardon Jashari, things are even more difficult: they’re effectively reserve players at this point, with the Swiss having only logged 276 minutes so far.
Then there are the collective issues that lead to the midfielders’ poor scoring contribution. That is, a game that flows slowly, leading to predictability and moving away from the kind of transitions that allow midfielders to crash the box.
There’s a tendency to worry too much about blocking the opposition rather than establishing a ball circulation capable of repeatedly setting up the midfielders for shots, as was the case in the early months.
It’s a question of intensity and courage that’s lost game after game, sometimes with entire periods of play handed over to the opposition. In this context, runs from midfield become too sporadic, and droughts follow.
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