It took AC Milan Women's team only 30 minutes of good, pacey and high-quality football to get a comeback win and consolidate the second place in the table against San Marino Academy, for the round 13 of Serie A, keeping up with Juventus and increasing the hype for their clash between on matchday 15, next march, 6. After watching the game and reading this beautiful and detailed article, let’s break this down in numbers and details.
Initial line-up and the pass accuracy
Milan lined-up in their usual 3-5-2 formation, this time with Spinelli, Agard and Vitale in the back 3 and Rizza as left winger, though she is right footed. Even though the rossonere dominated the offensive actions during most of the game, they were not able to break the deadlock as the titane placed their defensive lines deep in their area and had an extra help by the wet and heavy pitch due to the rain. Once again, Milan suffered from the lack of accuracy upfront, performing 30 shots, 22 from inside the box and 8 from outside, but only 6 of them on target. The bright side is that from the 473 passes, 81,6% of them were correct, an improvement thanks to Vero and Jane, with respectively 81,5% and 79,5% of accuracy.
Ganz make some changes; Dowie and Vero step up
After Corazzi scored from the penalty spot at the 50th minute, something has changed and, if I may, maybe someone is keeping tabs on us. Defender Giorgia Spinelli, the only lef foot player on the field among the rossonere until that point, scored the equalizer from a long-range effort and, not long after that, Ganz made three substitutions (Grimshaw, Tucceri-Cimini and Mauri replaced Rizza, Vitale and Simic), switching to a 4-3-1-2 formation, allowing Milan to move even forward, with Vero and Grimshaw taking turns on the trequartista role and Tucceri-Cimini, the assist woman of the team, helping upfront, and it took only 1 minute for these changes to pay off as Tucceri-Cimini found Dowie inside the area and the english striker found the back of the net with a header, directing it into the far corner of San Marino goalkeeper.
Back at the scoring sheet after two rounds, Dowie got her confidence back and started to act as the worldclass striker she is, playing as focal point of the rossonere’s attack and linking up with Veró perfectly, as the spaniard provided a fantastic no-look pass to the English striker to score her second in the game, her eighth in the league. In the injury time, Dowie still managed to give an assist to young Tamborini, who replaced Vero in the 84th minute, to score her first seasonal goal with a precise shot from outside the area.
Improving numbers
In resume, Milan got a comeback win after 2 goals from long-range efforts, a header with an impressive left-footed cross and increasing the accuracy of passes to 81,6%. Also, although the precision of the shots have to get better, with only 6 out of 30 on target (20% of accuracy), turning 66,6% of them on goals, scoring 4 out of 6 shots on target, is a step ahead. There is still room for improvements on this team and the clash against Sassuolo, for the Coppa Italia quarterfinals, might be a perfect time to explore them.
