Marco Silva outfoxes his compatriot: Tactical analysis of AC Milan 0-2 Benfica

There’s no two ways about it: AC Milan were humbled on their return to the European stage, losing 2-0 to Benfica at San Siro.

Benfica boss Marco Silva made nine changes from the team he played at the weekend, with an eye on Sunday’s huge early-season clash against Porto. Yet you would not have been able to tell, as the Eagles emerged with quite a comfortable win in the end.

Over 65,000 fans were at San Siro hoping to see Milan lay down an early marker in the competition, but things took a bad turn when Dodi Lukébakio fired in after 16 minutes. Jakub Kamiński made it 2-0 with a first-time shot into the roof of the net, and their defence kept Milan at bay.

It already feels like it will be a tough battle from here to get into the top eight of the ‘league phase’ with some difficult games to come. Rohit Rajeev has the tactical analysis from the ‘nightmare’ start in the UEL.

Set-ups and shape

Ruben Amorim chose to make five changes to the starting line-up from the team that drew with Lazio. He opted to put faith in Filippo Terracciano, Ardon Jashari, Davide Bartesaghi, Omari Hutchinson and Alphadjo Cisse in what was quite a youthful side.

Benfica defended in a compact 4-4-2 block, but Milan had a clear mechanism to manipulate it. Milan would recycle the ball backwards, with Musah dropping deeper to create a staggered midfield and alter the positioning of Benfica’s press.

From there, Milan used third-man combinations to move around the block and find the next pass into space.

One of Milan’s biggest problems in this game was cohesion. While the rest of the team sat back, Hutchinson stepped up to press high, creating a huge gap between the RAM and RWB. Benfica immediately exploited it, creating a 2v0 overload in the space.

It’s similar to the issue we saw against Lazio, where Musah was constantly asking the defenders to push up, precisely because gaps like this kept appearing between the lines.

Benfica breach Milan early

For Benfica’s first goal, they initially sucked Milan’s press towards their left wing before quickly switching the play to Lukebakio. Now, hear this out: Bartesaghi, wary of being beaten 1v1, maintains a large distance from Lukebakio.

He takes up the natural defensive stance, with his stronger left foot positioned behind and his right foot forward. But he completely fails to account for the fact that Lukebakio is left-footed.

Like Suso or Robben, he can simply cut inside onto his stronger foot and shoot. Bartesaghi essentially gives him exactly the action he should be protecting against. That is a basic defensive error of the highest order.

Laboured attack

There was also far too much wastage, particularly in transition. On one counter, Milan won the ball back and Pavlović drove forward with Benfica unsettled.

There were multiple passing options available, but instead of releasing the ball early, he hesitated, carried it further and ultimately seemed unsure of the decision.

Those extra seconds were costly: Benfica had enough time to recover, settle into their shape and close off all the vertical passing lanes.

There was far too much wastage from Milan in transition, particularly on the counter. Whenever Milan won the ball back, Pavlović would drive forward with multiple passing options available, but the hesitation to release the ball allowed Benfica to recover.

Those extra seconds gave them time to settle into their shape and block the vertical options, turning promising counter-attacks into nothing.

AllegriBall vs. AmorimBall

A noticeable pattern between ‘AllegriBall’ and ‘AmorimBall’ has been the lack of a coherent structure in build-up.

Here, the front five are doing a good job of pinning Benfica’s defensive line back, but Benfica have significantly overloaded the middle of the pitch.

The problem is that there are barely any visible passing options for Milan to find between or beyond the lines. This was also a recurring pattern under Allegri.

Of course, this isn’t necessarily a tactical problem, it is more a problem of bonding and understanding, rather the players haven’t fully grasped Amorim’s concepts yet.

With the constant chopping and changing of personnel and positions, there is still confusion over which position each player should assume in different phases of play.

A sucker-punch second

For Benfica’s second goal, they play through a weak Milan counter-press, escaping the initial pressure before switching the play to the opposite wing.

That immediately gives Sudakov the space to burst forward down the right and attack the exposed side of Milan’s defensive structure.

The major talking point, however, is whether Duran was actually offside in the build-up. That remains a big question for debate.

With better-suited players, Milan could potentially overcome Benfica’s central overloads through Pulisic dropping into the centre. His movement would draw a defender towards him and, in turn, open up space between the lines for him to occupy.

It’s a simple but effective mechanism: drop into the overloaded zone, manipulate the defender, then exploit the space created between the lines.