The International break is here and we decide to provide to you, football geeks, an analysis on the AC Milan Women's team performance. In order to make this a little more reader-friendly, this will be a three-parts special, each one focusing on one specific part of the game.
This first part we’d like to address to the defense.
We have the best defense in Italy, but...
It’s not a secret, and we also spoke about it a few times, that the Milan’s defense is the best there is. Up to now, Milan have played 18 matches among all competitions (Serie A, Coppa Italia and Supercoppa Italiana), have a 28 goals positive goal difference, scoring 37 (including here some own goals) and, above all, conceding only 9 times. Some eye-catching performances by goalie Korenciova and centre-backs Fusetti, Agard, Spinelli and Vitale are to be praised and are one of the key components to the rossonere success so far. Note that Korenciova was chosen the best goalkeeper of the first half of the Serie A.
However, this stronghold has a weak spot.
The set-pieces emergency
Among those 9 goals concede, 3 of the came from the penalty spot (Juventus, Napoli and San Marino converted), while Internazionale, Pink Bari and Fiorentina capitalized opportunities that came from set-pieces. In other words, 6 out 9 goals conceded came from set-pieces situations, meaning the Maurizio Ganz must address some practice sessions to better position his team’s defense on those occasions.
Looking back, Milan concede 3 goals from the penalty spot on 2018-2019 season, and only 1 last season.
The danger comes in the second half
By doing a timeline analysis, we noticed that Milan concede only 3 times before halftime, being 1 goal before minute 10, 1 goal between 11 and 20th minute of the game and another 1 goal between 31th and 40th minute.
However, in the second half, the rossonere concede in all the time segments, including injury time. Unfortunately, that tracks with the fact that the AC Milan Women’s team have the tendency to play better only in one half of their games, as we noticed before.
It is worth mentioning that this is an issue that comes since the 2018-2019 season, when 17 of the 27 goals conceded by the rossonere occurred in the final half of the game and continued in the 2019-2020 season, when 14 of the 18 goals conceded also occurred in the final half of the game.
Conclusion
There is not much to do here, but if Ganz wants to secure the Champions League Spot and keep the “best defense in Serie A” title, he must set up some defensive drills and practice defensive positioning to avoid conceding those goals from set-pieces and, better yet, committing penalties.
Image credits: acmilan.com
