AC Milan welcome Pisa to San Siro on Friday night with the possibility to secure top spot for the weekend with a win.
Milan have won five of their first seven games in Serie A, which has them at the top of the pile. They can open up a temporary four-point gap with a victory tonight, albeit temporarily while waiting for the other games, including Napoli-Inter.
A home match against bottom of the league is what you would want on paper, but the Cremonese game in round one shows the dangers of newly-promoted sides. Not only that, but there is another injury crisis to contend with.
AC Milan vs. Pisa: The five key battles
For Milan, it feels like a lot rests on the front two that Massimiliano Allegri will send into battle: Rafael Leao and Santiago Gimenez. The Fiorentina game saw both play a part in what was a big comeback win at San Siro.
Leao scored his first home league goal for 17 months to bring things level and then netted the penalty to win it inside the final 10 minutes. Gimenez won the spot kick, and will go in search of his first Serie A goal of the new campaign.
It will be a fascinating double duel involving the Portuguese and the Mexican with Raul Albiol and Simone Canestrelli. Albiol falls firmly into the ‘veteran’ category at 40 years of age, and after making his debut against Verona in the last round, he should be the defensive anchor.
Canestrelli meanwhile has featured in every game on the left side of a three-man defence. He was one of the starts of the promotion campaign, and the 25-year-old will have to try and keep Leao in check, who should drift out more to that side.
At the other end, M’Bala Nzola will be the one that leads the line for Pisa in a front two. They have only scored two goals in Serie A so far in 2025-26 (three in total, but the other was an own-goal) and Nzola has one of them.
Given that he plays on the left of the pairing, it will be interesting to see how Koni De Winter does in his first start since arriving at the club. Allegri seems to have made the decision to rest Fikayo Tomori, so the Belgian can stake a serious claim for more regular minutes by neutralising Pisa’s main threat.
In midfield, it feels obvious to highlight the importance of Luka Modric or the opportunity for Samuele Ricci, but the game could swing largely on the physical contest between Youssouf Fofana and Ebenezer Akinsanmiro.
The Frenchman has found himself a regular under Allegri after a mixed first season and he does a lot of the work that goes unappreciated, even playing further forward against Fiorentina to give Leao someone to play off. Akinsanmiro meanwhile is a 20-year-old Nigerian talent who has impressed so far with the Nerazzurri, and will be well up for the fight.
Finally, we end with a contest out wide between two wing-backs. Davide Bartesaghi has had a run of starts that he probably wasn’t expecting given that Pervis Estupinan is out with an ankle sprain, and so far his performances have been generally positive, particularly the cup game against Lecce.
His opponent will be Idrissa Touré, a 27-year-old German defender who promises to be a tricky customer because of his pace and his physicality. Alberto Gilardino’s side will look to use him as an outlet, and standing at over 6ft tall it will be a duel of two giants, at least relative to the usual size wing-backs are.
