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AC Milan secured a spot in the last 16 of the Coppa Italia with relative ease, beating Lecce 3-0 at San Siro on Tuesday night.
Many will point to the fact that the contest effectively ended inside the opening half an hour when Jamil Siebert was sent off after a VAR review for a last-man challenge. It was just a case of when and not if Milan would score, and Santiago Gimenez fired in a Davide Bartesaghi cross not long after.
Christopher Nkunku got his first goal for the Rossoneri with a scissor kick early in the second half, then Christian Pulisic made sure of the victory as he netted minutes after coming off the bench with a nice flick.
Massimiliano Allegri was not present in the dug-out as he served the second of a two-match touchline ban in the Coppa Italia, but the team he picked features six changes from the Udinese win. Lazio now await in the next round, and Rohit Rajeev has some tactical observations.
Shape and movement
Lecce used a 3-5-2 off the ball with Camarda and N’dri doubling up on Ricci, blocking off all passing lanes. The Lecce wide players were ready to jump incase Milan’s wing-backs came into play.
Milan used passes around the corner to bypass this press. Here we can see Tomori passing to Saelemaekers who stays wide with his back to goal. The important part is how Loftus-Cheek stays square of Saelemaekers to recieve the pass thereby bypassing Lecce’s press.
Milan used the Relationist principle of ‘escadinhas‘ – effectively a diagonal position – to play through Lecce’s lines.
Milan also formed overloads on the left with Nkunku pulling wide allowing Bartesaghi to make overlapping runs.
The Rossoneri used a 4-4-2 defensive setup higher up the pitch or in their mid-block. They outnumbered Lecce’s players 5v4 in this sequence leading to Rabiot hitting the post.
The key moment
The red card came with Milan once again using passes around the corner. In this situation Gimenez moves up the pitch and vacates space in the half spaces for Nkunku to occupy. Using his ability Nkunku covers the space and Siebert was forced to foul him.
The impact was instant: Lecce were reduced to four at the back instead of five. Bartesaghi got into the spaces behind N’dri who failed to track back (could also be why he was subbed off) and put Bartesaghi put the cross in for Santi who scored.
Second half success
Milan’s second goal came from a corner. With Bartesaghi pulling his man away it created space for Saelemaekers to cross the ball in. Lecce used a zonal marking system, with emphasis on the central spaces, so Nkunku was easily able to snuck in at the back post for an acrobatic finish.
The third goal was another passing manoeuvre. Athekame notices Loftus-CHeek in the half space and once he received the ball Fofana’s marker goes to double team him and the Englishman feeds it to Fofana to cross.
Meanwhile on the other side Pulisic stops and changes his direction like a proper target man striker and occupies the space between the centre-back – who is busy marking Gimenez – and the full-back who thinks he has Pulisic behind him.
Numbers of interest
The Serie A website provides some data in their post-match report. From the key numbers, we can pick out some quite obvious trends that hold true regardless of the game circumstances.
First of all, there is where the service came from. Bartesaghi provided the most passes into the final third of any player with 26, while he put in seven crosses and had three key passes.
On the other flank, Saelemaekers had 21 passes into the final third, five crosses and four key passes. It shows the reliance on the wide players to be the extra man into the attack and to feed the front two plus the midfield runners.
The top three for passes completed were the centre-back trio of De Winter, Tomori and Pavlovic. It shows how Milan aimed to build out from the back, either passing into midfield or to one of the wing-backs.
Then there is Rabiot, who continues to be as involved as any player. He had the most attempts (6), the most attempts on target (2), the third-most passes into the final third (22) and the second-most scoring chances (4).
The Frenchman also had the third-most crosses (3), the fourth-most passes completed (82) and the third-most key passes (2). Talk about being an all-action midfielder.
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