AC Milan 2022/23: Why AC Milan’s form has nose-dived post-World Cup – scout report

AC Milan suffered yet another big blow to their season last night against Lazio as they were beaten 4-0 in the capital to make it five games without a win. Milan are in free fall and the crisis is getting deeper and deeper.

For Stefano Pioli’s team, it was a January to forget. First came the elimination from the Coppa Italia, then the defeat in the Supercoppa against Inter and now Napoli are 12 points ahead in Serie A.

The collapse that the Diavolo are having is as vertical as it is inexplicable, and it forces Paolo Maldini, Ricky Massara and above all Stefano Pioli to quickly understand what is no longer working, otherwise, the season risks taking a very dangerous turn.

In this tactical analysis, we will take a look at the weaknesses in AC Milan’s game. Additionally in this analysis in form of a scout report, we will figure out why its not only because of Stefano Pioli’s tactics.

Squad Depth

Milan signed quite a few youngsters last summer that were meant to show their potential and help the team grow. Well, that plan has failed miserably as none of the signings have been of any use to Pioli with the marquee signing that cost the club north of €30m – Charles De Ketelaere – still yet to prove himself or even contribute at all.

After the match against Lazio, Mike Maignan, Fikayo Tomori, Theo Hernández, Fodé Ballo-Touré, Davide Calabria and Alessandro Florenzi are injured and can’t help the team in defence through the next matches.

The defence that was centred around the Fikayo Tomori and Pierre Kalulu pairing has become the weak point of this team. The two centre-backs must rediscover their focus but above all their calmness, which has been lacking since Mike Maignan got injured.

Sandro Tonali and Ismael Bennacer are up and down, likely because they don’t have adequate substitutes that can make them breathe.

Theo Hernandez and Olivier Giroud were brilliant for France at the World Cup, but the fatigue is now obvious, especially for the striker. At 36 years of age, Giroud should not be playing every game, especially since he played pretty much every game at the World Cup for France. It’s beyond obvious that the Frenchman needs a rest, but Divock Origi doesn’t seem to be up for the task whilst Zlatan Ibrahimovic is still recovering from injury. Hernandez doesn’t seem as tired as we saw some good runs from him and he wasn’t particularly at fault on the goals, but he has been missing that killer instinct lately and it doesn’t help that Rafael Leao has also had a dip in his form after the World Cup.

Rafael Leao has made progress but when Milan go behind, he must know how to take the team on his shoulders as he has shown he can do in the past.

And the management have to take responsibility here because Pioli did an unlikely job by winning the Scudetto with a young and raw team. And to replace a key player such as Franck Kessie, who left for free, the youngsters were clearly never going to be up to the task for this season. With the management not reacting in the transfer market yet, it seems it will be a tough couple of months for Pioli’s coaching team.

Weak Attack

There are so many negatives to draw from the last few matches, but let’s discuss the attack first. Excluding a couple of good individual moments by Leao that led to nothing in particular, Milan’s attack was just slow and lacked ideas.

As already mentioned, Giroud just seems tired. But, Junior Messias didn’t do much better on the right either. Brahim Diaz was also missing excluding a couple of nice turns that in typical fashion for him led to nothing, as his decision-making in the final third let him down.

There weren’t any solutions off the bench either and Pioli will need to get into the head of his players and bring back the fluidity if he doesn’t want the situation to get worse. In the last six matches (all in 2023), AC Milan only managed to score 6 goals in these 6 matches. The average xG per shot has been 0.09.

Out of their last 9 matches, they only won one match against Salernitana. In these 9 matches, they scored 8 goals. This means, that they only score 0.89 goals per 90.

The Backline

AC Milan do not only score less goals, but they also additionally concede too many goals this season. In the last 9 matches, they conceded 22 goals. This means that they concede 2.44 goals per 90. That is way too much for a team competing for the title. Their defence is AC Milan’s biggest problem this season.

To