Milan failed to reach the knockout stages and are completely eliminated from European football. The Italian media point at a poor performance from French goalkeeper Mike Maignan and a mistake from English defender Fikayo Tomori.
The Rossoneri finished bottom in Group B after the 2-1 defeat to Liverpool at San Siro, while Atletico Madrid secured a big win against FC Porto and surpassed both teams to leap into the next round.
The Diavolo had given themselves a chance to qualify with a win at the Wanda Metropolitano in the fifth round of fixtures, but the individual mistakes cost them on Tuesday night.
Milan once again dropped a lead to Liverpool after Fikayo Tomori’s opener and are now left with only two domestic competitions and can focus on the Scudetto battle in Italy.
But the Italian papers highlight that the defender gifted Liverpool the 2-1 goal, as the Englishman couldn’t fully fill the void left by injured Simon Kjaer.
Maignan, who was recently out with a wrist injury, has been back in action for a few games and was expected to play an important role in the decisive game against Jürgen Klopp’s men.
But the France international, who showed his worth in the first leg at Anfield, writes the headlines for the wrong reasons this time around.
“He takes the stage, as he did in the first leg, but unfortunately for him he is a negative protagonist,” La Gazzetta dello Sport writes. “Two shots, two rebounds that gift Liverpool a goal.”
Il Corriere dello Sport also highlights his poor intervention on Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain’s attempt, which leads to Mohamed Salah’s goal.
Maignan’s player ratings in the Italian newspapers:
La Gazzetta dello Sport: 5
Il Corriere dello Sport: 5.5
Tuttosport: 5.5
Tomori’s player ratings in the Italian newspapers:
La Gazzetta dello Sport: 5.5
Il Corriere dello Sport: 5.5
Tuttosport: 5
Le pagelle di Tomori: a due facce, ma quella brutta incide di più. Errore pesantissimo https://t.co/4uYHX22CUz
— TUTTOmercatoWEB (@TuttoMercatoWeb) December 8, 2021
Le pagelle di Maignan: protagonista come all’andata, questa volta in negativo https://t.co/9UdikW1W1r
— TUTTOmercatoWEB (@TuttoMercatoWeb) December 8, 2021
Tomori out
Haha blaming maignan and Tomori is just to easy. what about kessie???!!
This is normal and not surprising, because if you look at the people behind these papers , you will know they are bunch of deluded people who has got no reason to be in sport writing business, they will never talk about the main problem of Italian Football which is infrastructure, but yet they will write a full page on some useless stuffs
@lulzim Cakolli
Both were directly at fault for both goals. Maignan was at fault for salah goal in the game at Anfield and in the first half last night, fumbled and poorly parried nearly every shot. Tomori needed to control a simple pass, scuffed his control, which allowed Mane to get in and embarrass Maignan again.
The only player last night who played well was Romagnoli. The rest were all poor.
@Ralph
What on earth are you on about? This is assessment of a 93 minute game! Maignan directly assisted both liverpool goals. If not for Tomori’s poor control, Mane wouldn’t have been in for the 2nd goal. What has infrastructure got anything to do with a teams’ two top players making woeful individual mistakes??
Milan‘s entire campaign over 6 games was littered by individual mistakes. Not just tomori and maignan. But the fact is, a win would’ve taken Milan thru. And they would’ve been in the game right up to the last moments if not for Tomori’s poor control.
They may have been directly at fault for the goals but there are 11 players on the pitch. 2 goals don’t matter if the team wins 5-2. We played against a weakened Liverpool team and we had one of the worst performances of the team. The 2 players may be responsible for those 2 incidents, but the ENTIRE TEAM is responsible for not scoring more than the opposition.
@Chris.
Milan were weakened with injuries and covid etc for the entire campaign. Liverpool still had Salah, Mane etc on the pitch. When was the last time Liverpool conceded 5 goals in europe?? This is a team who even before reaching the two latest finals have consistently spent and spent simply due to being in the premier league. Teams with full squads to utilise. Milan were weakened in the away leg and only lost thanks to a deflected goal. Last night, and whilst poor, would’ve still been in the game right to the end if not for an individual mistake.
Milan haven’t operated at this level for years. Got thrown into a v.tough group with 3 sides who play in the champions league year in year out. Still. Milan’s problem was not the games vs liverpool and atleti. They let themselves down in those two poor shows vs porto.
@Chris I agree, blaming those 2 is typical newspaper stuff. The whole team were terrible. Zlatan should not have played, he was abysmal, no mention of him though.
If anything we should thank them, we need to be out of Europe to have any hope of winning the league and whoever we would have faced in the next round would have beaten us easily anyway.
How can a reasonable coach after seeing the Liverpool line up with a weak defense can not put up an attack that can penetrate such defense.tome tomori errors right from last season is too much.the goal keeper is just busy assisting the opponent to score goals.how can you play a good game against atletico Madrid and fail to beat a weak Liverpool side.pioli is. It a good coach,I have been saying it for a very long time.this players lack the spirit of winning games.
I mean pioli is not a good coach
@DB – I think against teams like Liverpool Zlatan becomes a liability. We would have more use out of him in games like that if he functioned as a deeper striker with someone willing to run in front of him.
@Rosario – I see what you’re saying but I just refuse to go straight to making excuses. As soon as Tomori scored we sat back, Ibra was static and Brahim Diaz was just chasing the ball. Milan may not have operated at this level for years, but if a team with the likes of Adil Rami, Poli, Saponara & co can make it to the last 16 I don’t see why we should be making any excuses for this bright, young team who had absolutely nothing to lose yet played as if they were clinging to a draw for the vast majority of the game. Liverpool have had to deal with Covid, Liverpool have had to deal with injuries, there’s only so many times we can keep pointing to the financial differences and allowing that to be an overriding excuse for a generally poor UCL campaign and very poor individual player management.
Pick a statistic, any statistic, and we were worse at it. That’s not because of money. Leicester won the Premier League without money and are still a force to be reckoned with.
@Chris. They’re not excuses. Milan desperately missed Rebic, Leao and Calabria last night. Kjaer would’ve started, though to be fair Romagnoli had a brilliant game. Football isn’t about 1 match. Milan have had to constantly chop and change lineups from game to game, and that would take its toll irrespective of the need for continuity and team cohesion.
Match 1 vs Liverpool – Krunic and Ibra were unavailable and Kessie had just returned from injury
Match 2 vs Atleti – Bakayoko, Ibra, Kjaer, Krunic and Messias were unavailable
March 3 vs Porto – Maignan, Diaz, Florenzi, Theo, Kessie, Messias and rebic were unavailable
Match 4 vs Porto – Maignan, Florenzi, messias, rebic, ballo toure were unavailable
Match 5 vs Atleti – Maignan, rebic, calabria and tomori were unavailable
Match 6 vs Liverpool – Calabria, Giroud, Kjaer, Leao and rebic amongst a few others were unavailable
6 matches marred by consistently not being able to call on critical players. So when you come up against a team who have cost over 650m euro to build and the luxury to rotate, saying financial disparity is an excuse is laughable.
And then when you look at each game on their own merit, individual mistakes cost Milan.
@Chris.
When did Leicester win the premier league? During the period of Guardiola’s plush spending etc? Milan are also top of Serie A. When compared to to the spending by Inter and Juventus and wages they’re paying, Milan like Leicester shouldn’t be there. But like Atalanta, team cohesion and ability to find talent are critical factors to build a team despite financial challenges. What Leicester did was remarkable. But how many times have they got back into the top 4 since winning?
Leicester won the league in the same season Manchester City had spent 140m on 4 players in which they finished 4th or 5th. Money does not buy you a league. It does not buy you a guaranteed victory. Leicester have not won the league since but are now regularly top 4 contenders in the best league in the world and are regularly competing in Europe.
You can’t blame individual mistakes and injuries for a prolonged failure which was spread out over the course of 540 minutes playing time excluding training and prep. The players have been managed so poorly by the staff when coming back from injuries (which is a surprise to me because I always thought the club have managed injuries well in the past) and we’ve not had a consistent 11 since the unbeaten Covid run, really. These aren’t accidents, there is a clear cause-and-effect.
Other than Mane, Salah and Alisson – who admittedly are world glass, game changing players – the rest of the team is a reserve team. The entire back line had never played together. I don’t care what injuries we have, I don’t care what league a team comes from, that is a team that was there to be attacked and we folded like a napkin. Second best in every statistic I could find.
‘Money does not buy you a league’
I think you’d find that 99.99% of time it does. There is always a one in a blue moon occurence, but that’s what it is…one in a blue moon. A surprise that man city, chelsea, liverpool and man utd have occupied the top 4 places for most years? They’re the big spenders.
No consistent unbeaten run?? Last season, we went the entire first half of the season unbeaten in the league and until the defeat vs fiorentina, we hadn’t lost since April vs Lazio. Europe is another level. A level that Milan just haven’t got experience at. Experience is gained thru regular participation.
When it comes to looking within, there is no doubt the team massively disappointed last night. But it wasn’t a one off game. It is a game in the course of a season, and lots of factors come into play. Mane, becker, salah, keita, fabinho, Konate. These are prime first team players.
At the end of the day, this is my club and what I was born into. I’m more disappointed and heartbroken post last night than you can imagine. But these boys have done so much since May of 2020. We can be self critical, but ultimately the team has to grow to face these types of games better. We just haven’t the experience. Last night, we bottled it.
I didn’t say a consistent unbeaten run, I said SINCE that unbeaten run we’ve not really had a consistent starting 11.
I just don’t subscribe to the victim culture – referee decision this, injury that. Every club has injuries and every club will have a controversial refereeing decision either for or against them. The only way we can grow is by minimizing them and we’re not going to do that pretending that this UCL campaign was a good one. We’ve finished dead last. No stats or narrative can override that.
@Rosario, I’m with you. Chris, by your logic you are saying that we should have won because their backline was a “reserve team” backline that had never played together, but that playing Krunic as LW, Messias in like his 3rd game, 40 year old Ibrahimovic with no one to spell him because 35 year old Giroud is injured and the ever injured Pellegri is injured, and Kjaer out don’t matter? Sorry, Krunic, Messias, Kalulu, Romagnoli and Saelemaekers just aren’t at the same level (for different reasons, Kalulu is still inexperiences for example) as even Liverpool’s reserves. We didn’t have real wingers!!! The best cross of the night came at the 90th minute from Kesssie (Ibra’s attempted bicycle kick) for f-sake.
No one is playing victim. The club is squad is young, inexperienced, and has missing pieces. We lead 2-1 at Anfield at the half, should have beat Atletico at the San Siro, won away at the Wanda Metropolitano. For a club in this condition and playing it’s first Champions League campaign in 8 years I think we did alright given that most of our results were on a knife edge and happened to go the wrong way. People need to calm down and look at everything from a broader perspective. We need to focus on finishing top 4 again (obviously try to win the title) and establishing that as a consistent base and from there the rest will come.
Hardest group in the competition by far, most players never played in CL before and will learn from this, never had our 1st 11 players for any of the matches and were without 5 starters for most the competition. Bigger name players were poor when it mattered I’m looking at Kessie, ibra, romanoli here. Time for the club get rid of Kessie for Sanchez, get vlahovic, get a quality defender alongside tomori. I can dream right?
@Chris. As to, “but if a team with the likes of Adil Rami, Poli, Saponara & co can make it to the last 16”, I think this is out of context. First of all, the last squad to make the CL was 2012-13, and there was no Poli, Adil or Saponara. So do your research. Secondly, we qualified for the CL that season by finishing 3rd with 72 points (Serie A only had 3 CL spots at that time). The quality of the competition must be taken into account. Fiorentina finished 4th, Udinese 5th, Roma 6th, Lazio 7th and Inter way down in 9th. Atalanta was basically battling relegation.
@Vero Rossonero.
Spot on. This isn’t about being victim or feeling sorry for ourselves. Absolutely not. But what do you want me to do? Put them all in a bin bag and beat them with sticks? We didn’t play well. We should’ve had done better, but we didn’t. Not a long time ago, we could’ve only dreamt about just being back in the champions league let alone having a realistic chance of qualifying from an extremely tough group. We aren’t victims and nor am I stuck in the past. We are where we are. We’ve come a hell of a long way. Matches and players can be critiqued. But we have to dust selves down, dry our eyes and move onto the next game. Honestly, I couldn’t sleep last night. I felt absolutely heartbroken. But these guys have also given a lot of joy.
I think Maignan made a good save on the second goal. It was a powerful and well placed shot by Mane and he did his best to get a hand to it and parry, but couldn’t to much about where it landed. He was at fault for the first goal though.
Defenders should’ve reacted better on both goals. We lost most of our points this year to ourselves, either by unfortunate and fatal individual mistakes or not playing the way we know how to (Porto matches).
This is what you get for booing Donnarumma.
lol @ Magic Mike !
Stop stealing other people’s username kid, and keep drooling over Dollarumma, like he would join a club that’s gonna be out of CL like Juventus!
lol @ Juve
@solo inter
What?? Even the best keepers on the planet make mistakes. Gigio made big mistakes arguably in his biggest match in a milan shirt in the coppa italian final vs Juventus. Maignan is not a robot. Mistakes happen. Even his opposite number in the liverpool goal has made horrendous mistakes.
Slightly different topic but did anyone notice how Liverpool were positioned gained us and how the whole team moved in unison?
Even with a largely 2nd string side each player knew where to stand and when to press for maximum result, it was really impressive to see, it was like watching a modern day, forward thinking footballing side from 2021 vs Arigo Sachi’s Milan in the 90’s (exaggeration).
I get why Klopp was happy with their display, it was like watching a synchronised swim team with every move they make, coordinated with purpose and confidence.
It’s the new way that football is being played vs the old way where there is no consistency in philosophy. Wonder why salah is so good? He always makes the same movements every game, his teammates work the same positions and make the same runs every game. He understands that Liverpool play a ‘brand’ of football, and they play their brand of football relentlessly irrespective of their opponent. Because how can you play one system one game and another system the weekend after? AND expect to become comfortable with how the team plays as a whole and your role within the team? There should always be tweaks for formations and tactics but ultimately the core brand or philosophy never changes.
If you watch this game again you will see that Liverpool’s ‘formation’ looked more like a pattern. Each player stood equidistant to the other (in almost a square), and (for the most part) the whole team maintained the same distance apart from each other, when the ball was moved or switched from side to side, the Liverpool players made the same movements to hold this pattern.
We talk about how football is evolving and I think this game was the perfect metaphor for it.
I’m disappointed Ragnerick didn’t come to us and Man U got him. Granddaddy of the Genenpress. There is no magic why Liverpool are so good and their players play so well consistently, it’s just that the team (regardless of which players) play the smartest way a team can play, consistently.
Until some other german coach figures out a way to how to counter it.
And this is the future of football in my eyes. Each team with a manager with a concrete Philosophy, who has time to construct and cherry-pick players who suit the style of play they eulogise. What I am saying is that Salah wouldn’t be Salah in this Milan team with the way we play, he is still a very good player regardless but the whole Liverpool team understand his strengths and each player has complimenting qualities that help him shine.
Klopp has figured out the style of play he wants his team to play and bought the players to execute and it is plain to see that it works, he has paved the way for a new winning system. And until we are humble enough to see that the old ways which did work, will not work anymore – i’ll keep my Milan shirt in the wardrobe and bring it out for the CL group stages where I’ll get to see our team stumble around.