AC Milan lifted their 50th major trophy into the Saudi Arabian sky on Monday night, and it couldn’t have come in better circumstances as they beat their city rivals Inter in a thrilling game.
Inter found themselves in complete control thanks to goals from Lautaro Martinez and Mehdi Taremi either side of the half-time whistle, and they were heading for a fourth straight Supercoppa Italiana triumph.
However, Milan never gave up and just like against Juventus in the semi-final they turned the game on its head in the second half. Theo Hernandez scored with a free-kick to halve the deficit, Christian Pulisic equalised with a lovely low shot and Tammy Abraham won it in the dying moments.
What it means is that Sergio Conceicao has become the fastest Milan head coach ever to win a trophy, beating the two main rivals to lift silverware after two games. But how did the Rossoneri triumph? Rohit Rajeev has the tactical analysis.
Milan’s shape
On the ball, Milan adopted a 2-3-5 system with the two centre-backs then Youssouf Fofana and Yunus Musah sitting in front of the defenders to absorb any counter-attacks that came from Inter.
Milan used a hybrid pressing system where the players higher up the pitch (Pulisic, Morata, Jimenez) cut off the passing lanes to Inter player while the midfielders and the defensive line protected their zones.
If Inter had breached Milan’s man-marking then a ball-oriented pressing would be adopted, and as we can see here a narrow system is adopted where the centre is protected.
To declutter Milan’s tight zonal press, Inter would often pass to Sommer inviting Alvaro Morata and other Milan players to press, creating space between the lines. Inter then would suddenly increase the speed of transition and exploit the space.
Stopping the threat
In the derby that Milan won 2-1 in September, one of the main threats that Inter had was Dimarco and Bastoni, who would overlap/underlap and create chaos for opposition.
The counteract this, Conceicao instructed Jimenez to man mark Dimarco and Musah to mark Bastoni. This meant that Inter were not able to create their usual wide overloads and got 3v3’d in the wide areas with Emerson Royal joining the mix.
