Feyenoord 1-0 AC Milan: Five things we learned – ghosting on the frontline

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·13 Februari 2025

Feyenoord 1-0 AC Milan: Five things we learned – ghosting on the frontline

AC Milan fell to a 1-0 defeat in the Netherlands on Wednesday night, and their Champions League hopes rest on a good performance at San Siro.

As a (painful) recap, Milan suffered a heavy defeat in Zagreb to Dinamo which prevented them from finishing in the top 8 spots in the Champions League thus forcing them to play in the play-off round before advancing to the knockout stages.

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Ironically or not the opponents they had to face in the playoffs were Feyenoord, the former team of the Rossoneri’s big winter signing – Santiago Gimenez.

The Dutch side were in the middle of a bad moment before the game but acted swiftly and sacked their coach with Pascal Bosschaart taking over as an interim, and this decision gave them the needed impulse as they played brilliantly against the Diavolo, winning 1-0 albeit with a bit of luck on the goal but more on that later.

Following the goal, Milan had little to offer going forward and when they did have a chance to equalise the efficiency was just not there with the players struggling to get going.

It’s all up in the air as things stand and with the reverse fixture in Italy, Milan are still the favourites to go through.

However, they will need to pick up the pace and be clinical in front of goal if they wish to continue their Champions League campaign.

Here are five things we learned:

1. A familiar mistake

Milan played poorly and Feyenoord certainly had more than one chance to score, but it’s fair to say that the goal they did score was a gift from Mike Maignan. A goalkeeper of his class should’ve saved Paixao’s shot 100 out of 100 times, but the Frenchman failed to do so.

If it were his first time fluffing an easy shot like that, we could’ve been more lenient towards him, but the unfortunate reality is that Maignan is making mistakes like this a little too often for our liking and it’s only fair to criticise him.

2. Leao not up to the challenge

Leao also did not perform on the night and he had more than enough chances to turn the game around.

The Portuguese struggled to get going in the opening minutes, but eventually improved as the game progressed, even finding himself in some dangerous spaces in the second half of the opening 45 minutes.

Unfortunately, on all of these occasions, he was too slow to get a shot off or simply sloppy. For example, the big chance where he was essentially 1 vs 1 with the goalkeeper but didn’t even manage to get a shot off, allowing the defender to catch up after initially beating him for pace, is a perfect showing.

Then in the second half, he had a few nice moments where he beat his man easily, but then his end product was dreadful, if we’re being honest.

The winger needs to react well next week as he keeps being labelled as this phenomenon by everybody, Conceicao included, but we haven’t seen anything phenomenal in a while.

3. Gimenez a ghost

The Mexican was handed his first start after arriving a couple of weeks ago and was pretty much invisible through a game filled with mixed emotions for him having to face his old side just two weeks after joining Milan.

In hindsight, one can argue that Conceicao could’ve opted for Tammy Abraham instead given that the Englishman is in good form now and the fact that Feyenoord are familiar with Santiago Gimenez and know how to neutralise him well. But one can only speculate the outcome if Tammy was indeed preferred for this game.

Photo by Dean Mouhtaropoulos/Getty Images

Nevertheless, focusing on Gimenez, he was simply not good enough and wasn’t able to influence the game at all, but he’ll have his chances next Tuesday and hopefully this time he can punish the old club.

4. Centre-back duo the only positive

Malick Thiaw and Strahinja Pavlovic are probably the only ones who could hold their heads high following that performance and more specifically Pavlovic, who won the MOTM in our post-game ratings.

The Serb has been outstanding since Conceicao gave him his chance, following rumours that Milan might be inclined to sell him.

5. Walker found his match

The Englishman has been very good since joining from Manchester City and brought some much-needed leadership at the back, as well as composure and pace that was missing with Emerson Royal and Davide Calabria.

Against Feyenoord, however, he finally found his match in the face of Igor Paixao. The Brazilian scored the opening goal, with a bit of help from Maignan, which then seemingly helped his confidence as he was unplayable on the night making life hard for Kyle Walker and Milan as a whole as he earned Thiaw a yellow card too.

Walker was thus forced to focus a lot on his defensive duties and even then struggled to keep up, although the winger was contained for most of it with the Rossoneri doubling down on him in the second half.

However, this limited Walker in terms of his attacking contribution and that also affected Pulisic who struggled to get going too.

In the reverse fixture, Conceicao needs to figure out how to limit Paixao since he is by far their most dangerous player.