Serie A 2023/24: How Inter will try to cope with Milan’s fluid movement in Derby della Madonnina – tactical preview

Over the last few years, the Derby Della Madonnina has once again become a spectacle, with the games impact strongly affecting the landscape of Serie A due to the resurgence of both teams. This is once again the case at this early stage of the Serie A season, with both teams sitting on 9 points, with Inter at the top of the league and Milan in second on goal difference.

Both teams have found their attacking form relatively quickly, with both sides scoring eight goals in the opening three games. However, unlike Milan, Inter have yet to concede a goal, despite the exits of key players such as Milan Škriniar and Marcelo Brozović. Towards the end of last season, Inter managed to breeze past Milan in the semi-final of the UEFA Champions League. With their new additions this summer, Milan have made a few tweaks to their game model, making them even more challenging to play against. 

This tactical analysis in the form of a tactical preview will analyse Milans tactics in attack, how these have caused problems for opposing teams at the start of the season, and how Inter may look to press against and mitigate Milans attacking threat this weekend. 

The fluid movement of Milan

Although losing prominent members of the side, such as Sandro Tonali and Brahim Díaz, Milan have managed to strengthen well this season, recruiting Ruben Loftus-Cheek and Christian Pulisic from Chelsea as well as Tijjani Reijnders from AZ Alkmaar just to name a few. The undeniable strength of this Milan side lies in the ball-carrying ability of some of their players, such as Théo Hernández and Rafael Leão, with Loftus-Cheek also providing additional threat from a ball-carrying perspective.  

Due to this, Milan have become adept at creating space for one another, allowing the side ball carriers to run into and exploit spaces with or without the ball. Milan are able to create these spaces in a variety of ways, with one of these being their fluid movement, particularly in the first few phases of build-up, with this being one of the most fascinating aspects of their style of play this season.

Milan, under Stefano Pioli, have used a back three to build up on several occasions. Still, this season, what has stood out is the flexibility of the back 3, with different players dropping into the defensive line depending on the situation at hand and whether there is the space to do so.

At times, Théo, the left-back, can adopt a relatively deeper position and become a part of the back three. Davide Calabria is mostly inverting into the midfield to form a double pivot with Rade Krunić. 

Krunić and Calabrias midfield positions do not prevent them from dropping into the back line; at some points, Reijnders even drops deeper into the back three from advanced midfield positions. From the opposition perspective, this flexibility in movement creates many question marks over who is meant to cover which player. In this instance, Andrea Belotti initially covers Krunić, but as a pass is played backwards, he begins to advance further forward.