AC Milan vs Napoli Tactical Breakdown: Napoli Triumph in Milan
Sunday night in Milan provided footballing fans with a mouth-watering top-of-the-table clash as AC Milan took on Napoli at the San Siro. AC Milan were the favourites going to the clash, especially as defending champions of the Scudetto, however, under Spalletti this season Napoli look serious contenders with great squad depth. Despite, Spalletti’s touchline ban — both managers (including the stand-in manager) had many moves up their sleeve to turn this into an intriguing tactical match-up.
Lineups:
AC Milan lined up with a 4–2–3–1 with Giroud playing the sole striker — however, in attack it was seen to be more of a 2–4–3–1 with both the full-backs joining the defensive midfielders to cause overloads out wide. In the image below, Napoli’s defensive structure can also be seen — Napoli stuck to their 4–3–3 shape; however, the full-backs are visibly narrower and not engaging the pushed-up Milan full-backs as this could leave gaps for Milan’s 3 attackers or Giroud to come into.
In response, Napoli also adopted a similar approach in attack — perhaps this can be called the ‘modern’ approach as most teams look to push their fullbacks forward.
However, a slight difference that could be noted is that Napoli’s full-backs looked to make overlapping runs to cause overloads (image above) — this was different to Milan’s style where the full backs acted as stationary wide positions. This can be brought down to Napoli’s more direct style of passing in which they prefer short, precise passing — this is more possible to achieve with overlapping runs in proximity and attacking in duos or trios.
Build-Up Play:
Napoli followed a similar game plan to what they always do — which is to play out of the box. In the image below, it can be seen that inside or around the edge of their own box there are 6 players ready to receive the ball — it is a deliberate structure to enhance their ability to build their plays from the back. How did Pioli tackle this? He engaged the high press — 5 of Milan’s players are close to man-marking the Napoli players and the forwards are rushing the centre-backs. The Milan defensive midfielders also followed the runs of the attacking Napoli players deep into their own half. Through this combination of a man-marking and high press style — the game stayed at a high tempo, but Napoli wasn’t given breathing space in the early parts of the game to settle into a passing rhythm. Within the first 10 minutes — Napoli lost possession in their own half over 5 times, twice leading to near-chances for Olivier Giroud — this was Pioli’s game plan at work.
The partnership of Theo Hernandez and Giroud:
Multiples times in the first 20 minutes, there were crosses played in from the left side either by Theo Hernandez or Tonali, who would cover Hernandez when he roamed or was out of position. The best example of this preference to cross and utilise Giroud as a classic heading number 9 is seen right here — Hernandez could’ve easily played a direct pass out to the edge of the left-hand side of the box which could’ve opened other possibilities — but Milan preferred to load 3 bodies in the centre of the box and aim the ball in around Giroud for a headed opportunity.
In general, Giroud’s presence opened a lot of opportunities for AC Milan. On the counterattack, they could use his imperious presence to create overlapping runs and overloads on certain sides of the field.
As seen in the above image — Giroud is holding up the ball with his chest and then waiting for an overlapping run.
The run eventually comes, and Milan has bodies forward — however, Napoli recover due to the high work rate of their players. In the play before — they had 6 players in Milan’s box but as soon as their Georgian star lost the ball, they now have 7 people working to be in solid defensive positions. This makes it hard for Milan’s counterattacks to thrive.
Politano Goal:
Politano’s goal came because of an interesting tactical choice by Pioli at half-time. He subbed off the club captain who had done a great job at right back by containing Napoli’s threatening number 7. However, potentially Pioli was worried by the yellow card that Calabria had — as a result, Sergino Dest was subbed on for his Serie A debut.
Kvaratskhellia was much more involved in the opening 10 minutes of the 2nd half — the penalty came because of his outburst of pace past Dest who aimed to get the ball but got the Georgian’s foot instead. The tactical substitution had not worked for Pioli — Dest seemed outmatched by the pace and technical skill of Kvaratskhellia — he also seemed a bit smaller than him and wasn’t able to provide physical resilience like Calabria. Ultimately, Calabria’s defensive output was much greater — he made 2 tackles, 2 interceptions and 1 clearance in his 45 minutes compared to Dest’s solitary tackle and a penalty given away.
Substitutions:
The 65th-minute mark saw perhaps the most important substitutions of the game. Brahim Diaz and Junior Messias came on for Krunic and Saelemaekers. While, AC Milan had created a lot of chances during the course of the game — a lot of them had come from crosses towards Giroud from the full-backs or the holding midfielders. Pioli perhaps sensed a lack of creativity from his attacking midfielders.
Napoli brought on Giovanni Simeone — who had scored a misery-piling goal against Liverpool. Raspadori made way, this was perhaps just a move for fresh legs and a fresh outburst of pace to provide a new challenge for the Milan defence.
Giroud Goal:
This goal was a great example of individual brilliance from Milan. Charles De Ketelaere — who was Milan’s marquee signing found the surging run of Theo Hernandez who had gained positional ascendancy over Mario Rui. Napoli had done a decent job in maintaining a solid defensive zone — however, perhaps in situations like this, there is a need to man-mark and cut off runs.
Theo Hernandez cut apart the Napoli zone with a wonderful ball to Giroud. His attacking output was brilliant against Napoli with 3 key passes and 57 touches — most of them being in the opposition box. However, questions have to be raised around Napoli’s defensive approach here — 3 people were covering Junior Mesillas. Even if they are retaining a defensive zone there should be a compact level of width rather than congestion. Ultimately, Giroud was clinical, and Napoli was punished.
Simeone Goal:
This was the definition of a super-sub. Simeone was brought on to give the defenders a bit more work as Raspadori had barely breached the defensive block of Tomori and Kjaer/Kalulu.
Here it can instantly be seen that Simeone’s agility and dribbling skills had drawn out the Milan backline as Kalulu followed his run — Simeone was smartly able to offload this ball creating a huge gap in the Milan backline. Mario Rui was smartly able to read this and Simeone again displayed a great work rate surging into that space (image below). While Tomori attempted to cover his other centre-back’s venture it wasn’t enough as Napoli took the lead and snatched the points in a see-saw top-of-the-table clash.
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