Bologna have beaten Milan to win their third Coppa Italia trophy, after 1970 and 1974, thanks to a Dan Ndoye strike in the Final.
The Rossoneri last won this trophy in 2003, while it was the Rossoblu’s first Final in 51 years, but it was also precious for guaranteeing Europa League qualification.
Santiago Castro, Ndoye and Emil Holm returned to the starting XI, with Giovanni Fabbian preferred to Jens Odgaard, leaving Martin Erlic and Estanis Pedrola on the treatment table. Youssouf Fofana and Rafael Leao were back in the line-up, with only Riccardo Sottil and Warren Bondo injured for the showdown on neutral turf at the Stadio Olimpico in Rome.
Bizarrely, these teams already met last Friday in Serie A, Milan emerging 3-1 winners at San Siro.
See how it all unfolded on the Liveblog.
Within three minutes, Rafael Leao had turned Jhon Lucumi inside out to pull back from the by-line, but Alex Jimenez could only fire over from six yards under pressure.
Mike Maignan came flying off his line to smother at the feet of Riccardo Orsolini, despite the very tight offside call, while Maignan got down to palm the Castro glancing header off the line.
Lukasz Skorupski needed sensational reactions to parry both the deflected Alex Jimenez cross off Sam Beukema and the Luka Jovic rebound from point-blank range.
Maignan smothered a Holm header on a corner and Milan immediately countered, Lewis Ferguson booked for bringing down Rafael Leao, getting his nose accidentally smashed in the process. Moments later, the Rossoneri were furious when they felt Ferguson should’ve received a second yellow card for his coming together with Christian Pulisic, but the decision went against them, and the American was booked instead for dissent.
After the restart, Leao squirmed away from Holm to roll across for Jovic, intercepted crucially by Lucumi, but it was Bologna who took the lead.
Orsolini sprung the offside trap on a through ball and was tackled by Theo Hernandez, but it fell to Ndoye who managed to control and smash into the net from 11 yards to open the scoring.
NDOYE FOR BOLOGNA! 🔥
The Rossoblù lead against Milan in the Coppa Italia final 🔵🔴 pic.twitter.com/eO8DolGciF
— Premier Sports (@PremSportsTV) May 14, 2025
When these teams faced off in Serie A on Friday, Bologna had also taken the lead, only for Milan to turn it around after moving to a four-man defence. Sergio Conceicao made similar changes here, introducing Santiago Gimenez, Kyle Walker and Joao Felix.
Fofana surged forward only to over-hit the pass for Jovic, who hit the side-netting, while Joao Felix horribly scuffed his finish on the Tijjani Reijnders pull-back, then Santiago Gimenez did the same on the Theo Hernandez assist.
Ndoye drilled wide from a promising position, but Milan didn’t do enough to get back into the game and continue their record of being the club with the most Coppa Italia runner-up medals, this being their ninth out of 14 attempts.
Milan 0-1 Bologna
Ndoye 53 (B)
Player statistic
| Fikayo Tomori |  |
38' | ||
| 43' | |
Lewis Ferguson | ||
| Christian Pulisic | |
45+2' |
| 53' |  |
Dan Ndoye | ||
| 57' | |
Giovanni Fabbian | ||
| 74' | |
Jhon Lucumí |
Match statistic
Congratulations to bologna and Mariani. Milan played for 15 minutes. Amongst the wor5t performances of the season but Mariani was man of the match.
Congrats Bologna, fully deserved. Hope this heralds a significant Milan reset.
Horrible ref but this was the right result. We beat Inter on the way and that was enough, but we didn’t deserve to win the cup because those who made this mess and ruined Milan didn’t deserve this trophy to use as an excuse.
Congrats to Bologna. Now Milan can fire everyone and start over. And I mean everyone. Please add some Italian players to this roster.
Well done Bologna, it’s great to see different teams winning trophies.
Milan with 1 Italian player from 16.