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Montella’s tactical plan can be seen clearly in the way Milan sets up ball possession management. The rossoneri are the team that completed the most passes of the entire day (573) and also the one that attempted the highest number of passes (634), which is the reason that it is also the formation with the highest percentage of completions (90.4%). The impressive thing is the time of possession, the highest in the league with 17.1 seconds and no less than 12 times having possession longer than 45 seconds. No one made more key passes (9) and only Fiorentina and Atalanta attempted more passes in the final third.

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Milan’s performance is reflected in the stats of the two centre fullbacks. The Diavolo is the team that committed the least amount of fouls out of the entire day (5) and it did not concede even one in a dangerous area. But not only. Paletta and Zapata proved to be the two players with the most number of completed passes and the best pass success percentage.

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Milan held their line the fifth highest on average that day (55.0: only Atalanta, Empoli, Udinese and Lazio did better) despite the fact that Genoa was not the worst formation of the day (54.5: almost identical to the rossoneri numbers). In fact, it was the quality of the duels that made the difference. The two teams on the pitch at San Siro engaged in 173 of them. But Montella’s Milan was successful in 84, proving to be the team with the least number of duels lost out of the entire day (only 46). Conversely, the Griffon got the upper hand only 48 times. No other team did worse.

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One of the most significant performances in the rossonero camp was that of Ocampos, one of the many “ex” players of the day. The Argentinian was the best of the day for the number of times he attempted dribbling (11), succeeded in dribbling (10) and obviously for the dribbling success percentage (90.9%: just ahead of his teammate, Deulofeu). But not only. Ocampos was the eighth best player of the day in terms of duels (33), the third best for the percentage of duels won (45.5%) and the eighth best for offensive duels (19, 52.6% success rate). This was an all-around performance that led him to being the second-ranked Serie A player for shots (5) and shots on goal (3). However, the fact that he was so incisive in the two playing phases without successfully scoring is precisely where Milan still needs to take their step forward in terms of quality.

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This is another reason that Vincenzo Montella’s Milan was the second best team in terms of percentages of scoring chances developed in the 15 attacking plays (40%), but they had a rather low and steady finishing percentage of just 6.7%.

Mattia Fontana
Eurosport Italia editor.