AC Milan 1-3 Liverpool: Five things we learned – going backwards since 2022

AC Milan started their Champions League campaign with a 3-1 loss to Liverpool and were totally outplayed, thus further putting pressure on Paulo Fonseca to turn things around quickly.

The game actually started in the best possible way for Milan as they opened up the scoring just three minutes in through Christian Pulisic who combined well with Alvaro Morata and buried a low shot inside the far post.

Unfortunately it was all downhill from there on as Liverpool took the initiative and ended up scoring through Ibrahima Konate, Virgil van Dijk and Dominik Szoboszlai to earn a 3-1 win that was actually quite generous in the Rossoneri’s favour.

This loss further deepens the worries at Milan and it won’t be long until the we can say it is a full-blown crisis with the derby coming next which can further worsen the situation. Here are five things we observed during the Liverpool loss…

1. Tactics let Milan down 

The first two Liverpool goals were both from set pieces where no Milan player seemingly marked Konate or Van Dijk which sounds bizarre given the threat they are on set-pieces.

That’s mainly because of the way Fonseca prefers to defend using zonal marking, but given the opposition and their strength from dead balls one would think that an alternative tactic would’ve been used. What was even worse was that after conceding the first goal, Milan did not react and managed to let a second identical goal in.

Then we get to all the sloppiness at the back which we can’t solely address to tactics, but we could make the case that the coach instructed the players to try and keep the ball playing it from the back instead of clearing away from Milan’s half.

If that is the case both the carelessness of the players and the instructions of the coach need adjusting since that seemingly didn’t work at the beginning of the game and failed to work as they match went on,

Finally, the lack of urgency with which Milan played meant they were hardly going to trouble Liverpool and that was pretty much the case excluding a few nice combinations. Throughout the 90 minutes we saw a slow Milan that couldn’t move the ball quick enough, thus struggling to find open space.

Given it’s not a one-off but rather a constant since the start of the season Fonseca has less and less time to turn the ship around and against Inter on the weekend it won’t be much easier either.

2. Lack of leadership critical

The leadership – or the lack thereof – really let Milan down on the night. We start with the captain Davide Calabria, who barely put a foot right on the right flank and was also at fault for the foul that led to the equaliser.

Then on the other flank Theo Hernandez and Rafael Leao also disappointed. Theo was occupied for most of the time as he had a lot of defensive duties, given the opposition, and he did fairly well but not brilliant since Mo Salah managed to hit the crossbar twice. The Frenchman was much better compared to Calabria on the right, still.

Leao on the other hand was a ghost excluding a couple of moments where he used his speed, one of which was the 96th minute. For the majority of the game Trent seemed to know exactly what the Portuguese was going to try to do and prevented it from happening rather easily.

The winger was also isolated for big parts of the game and instead of trying to get on the ball, move around switching position he just stayed out of the game.

The rest of the squad can also be put under scrutiny excluding only one or two, but the reality is that Milan lacks and has been lacking a true leader for a while now and will continue to struggle in games like the one against Liverpool if someone doesn’t step up in tough situations.