In the match that opens 2026 in Serie A, Milan are in Cagliari looking for points to consolidate their position in the standings and keep pace with the top teams. The Rossoneri arrive on January 2nd in bandages. Allegri is forced to deploy the new Bartesaghi-De Winter-Tomori trio in defence, while up front he has to do without the entire attacking duo of Nkunku-Pulisic who scored three goals against Verona just five days earlier: in their place a bruised Leão and Loftus-Cheek.
The match is very boring, in the first half it is difficult to find material for highlights and it ends with a lackluster 0-0. At the restart, however, Allegri made some small tactical adjustments. Also due to Bartesaghi’s retreat, the Rossoneri worked in possession with a 4-4-2 with Estupiñán and Tomori as full-backs, began to overload the right side and from there in a few minutes created the two best chances of the match. In the 49th minute Saelemaekers catches Loftus-Cheek’s head with a cross from the midfield, which he wastes; about thirty seconds later, from a combination between Saelemaekers, Fofana and Rabiot again on the right chain, Leão found the opening goal. From that moment on practically nothing happens and the match ends 0-1. A match that seems to reflect various of Allegri’s maxims, and above all that for which a coach must above all try not to cause damage in the first half.
Saelemaekers’ touch from the outside attracts pressure and creates the artificial transition for the goal. You can clearly see Milan’s 4-4-2, who perhaps also considered Obert more attackable than Palestra.
Post-match the usual routine that every 1-0 for Allegri brings with it began, with the classic memes about horses and short faces. In the following days, a strange statistic also circulated on social media: it is the twelfth time this season that Milan has scored with its first shot on goal. There was talk of cynicism, but also a lot of luck. How much is true? I tried to give some explanations also helping me with the numbers Hudl Stats Bomb.
First of all, a first piece of data: Milan are, with 28 goals (1.65 p90), the second most prolific attack in the championship: they score 0.51 goals p90 more than the Serie A average. To understand how these goals arrive, a qualitative metric that tells us something more is the xG: the expected goals.
Milan, as mentioned, is the second team in this championship in terms of number of goals scored. The overall data on xG, which I decided to consider without penalties, tells us that the Rossoneri are fifth in terms of the amount of chances created. The team scores 1.47 NPGol compared to 1.25 NPxG: this means aoverperformance by 0.22 per game compared to what was built. A high figure, but which can also be sustainable in the medium term given the individual qualities of the AC Milan attackers.
We then need to see how these conclusions are constructed. StatsBomb considers as “clean scoring opportunities” those shots that occur where there is only the goalkeeper between the attacker and the goal, without any defender in the middle who can interfere with the trajectory of the shot. In an article at the beginning of December I cited Milan for their great ability to defend their penalty area, because they managed to minimize the concession of this type of situation. In the meantime, the team has also improved in the other direction: it still leads in terms of the number of clean scoring opportunities conceded (1.06 per game), but in terms of those created it has made a leap forward, creating 2.12 per 90, the second best figure in Serie A. Two numbers which, seen together, quite easily demonstrate the great start to the championship. The feeling of cynicism remains because despite this quality of opportunities, Milan still kick very little towards goal.
In the following graph I have depicted the relationship between scoring opportunities (the ones just mentioned) and conclusions towards the goal, to understand quanti of the shots that a team manages to create are actually excellent opportunities. To be clear, if a team has this type of metric at 10%, it means that it manages to put itself in a 1v1 situation with the opposing goalkeeper every ten shots attempted.
Milan’s figure stands at 16.16%, the fourth in Serie A. It is a high number, true, but definitely not unsustainable and far from the caricature – that some make – of a team that doesn’t know how to attack, and which scores the only times it does so.
However, the Rossoneri shoot little (eighth in Serie A) and do it well. If we consider the xG per shot, i.e. how qualitative the shots created are on average, Milan are 4th here too, a symptom of a good offensive performance, but which is not an outlier in the context of our championship.
The quality of the opportunities he creates largely explains the coolness of his players in front of goal, another part is explained by the quality of the players, given that Milan has one of the best offensive departments in the championship at its disposal. The rest is obviously a bit of a coincidence, which in football can never be ignored. Twelve goals on the first shot on target, even given this context, remain partly the result of chance.
However, there is perhaps more to analyze. A tactical reason that can explain the clarity of Milan’s attackers in the opposing area. Milan practically doesn’t press.
The PPDA is the number of passes that are allowed on average to the opponent before making a tackle, an interception or a defensive action more generally, it is the most interesting data for pressing. Milan is very last in this metric, with only Lazio coming close. Allegri’s team often prefers to adopt a medium-low block for various reasons: to not expose its defenders too much, to narrow the field for Modric to cover, for simple football ideology. Statsbomb allows us to represent this attitude very well with the following graph.
Each white dot represents an individual defensive action, such as a tackle, an interception or a foul. The dots are scattered around the playing field, which is divided into 30 partitions, both horizontally and vertically. Once this is done, it is calculated how much compared to the average of its championship a team performs in that specific area. If it does more, the color of the area is more towards red, vice versa, it is towards grey.
Milan, as mentioned, tends to work little in the offensive half of the field (as can be seen from the green and purple lines), but tends to create a central defensive block that favors reconquests and counterattacks thanks to the aggressiveness of the arms on the sides, aided by defenders and midfielders. The areas close to the sidelines are therefore redder, indicating this aspect especially on the right side, where Tomori and Saelemaekers have found a good synergy, not a given in the summer. This defensive attitude creates the conditions for long-field attacks that the team seems to appreciate due to its characteristics, but it also produces a more subtle benefit.
This tactical attitude allows the forwards to work little in pressing and to remain lucid in their technical executions. It is an aspect that cannot fail to have an impact.
Another aspect that is little talked about is creativity with the ball. Milan are more fluid and qualitative than people say: it often happens that their players combine with quick triangulations, managing to find excellent opportunities even against lined up defences. Few in Serie A can field players with the quality on the ball of Modric, Pulisic, Saelemaekers, Leão. When they team up they can combine into beautiful actions that a spectator who doesn’t watch the matches would find difficult to associate with an Allegri team, but which can also arise thanks to the tactical context. Emanuele Mongiardo spoke about it about a month ago, dissecting some of the Rossoneri’s best offensive actions.
Two of the triangulations which, as in Cagliari, allowed Milan to score with the defense deployed. In both, it is the top of the triangle who receives the ball, while the third man (respectively Bartesaghi, who will score, and Tomori, who will assist Leão) is already ready to receive while running behind his marker.
The sustainability of this efficiency depends on various factors. It should be mentioned, however, that this overperformance by Milan came in a difficult offensive context due to the many injuries. Leão was injured in August in the Italian Cup and was out for a while; Santiago Gimenez, called in to replace him, disappointed before also getting injured. In the meantime, Pulisic has emerged, who scores a lot but who is also often struggling with physical problems; forced to always play also due to Nkunku’s stuttering performances, paid €42M only 4 months ago and already almost on the verge of being sold. Allegri was even forced to field a midfielder like Loftus-Cheek in the front two, who obviously cannot give the technical guarantees that a striker should guarantee. Füllkrug, a finisher, has arrived from the January transfer market, who will be able to give variations to the tactical score – he too, however, brings with him inevitable question marks.
The attitude that Allegri wanted to give to his team was largely influenced by the lack of continuity in the players in the squad. It will be very interesting to understand how the offensive structure will change once he has all the attackers available.
Having found the right defensive position, Milan’s ambitions for the Scudetto depend above all on their ability to continue to be a dangerous team in the opponent’s area.
