Wing-back worry and a must up front: The five key battles in Milan vs. Lecce

AC Milan are taking on Lecce at San Siro this evening, hoping to get back to winning ways, and there are five key battles to keep an extra eye on.

After the draws against Juventus and Lazio in the league, as well the defeat to Benfica in the Europa League, Milan need to clinch a win ahead of the international break. It wouldn’t be unfair to say that it’s a must for Ruben Amorim’s side.

Many changes are expected for the starting eleven, with the hopes of getting a reaction, and that also means that there will be some interesting battles. Lecce may have struggled a bit so far, but they still have some good players.

AC Milan vs. Lecce: Five key battles

Let’s start at the back from Milan’s perspective. Samuel Chukwueze has been a little bit criticised for his defensive contributions at right wing-back and today, he will need to be on his toes as Antonino Gallo likes to get forward.

The Lecce left-back has actually been linked with the Rossoneri in the past, mainly because he’s a very good all-rounder: defensively disciplined, but likes to get forward and has a good cross on him. Chukwueze cannot afford to leave him 1v1 with Mario Gila too much.

More so than ground duels, I think Pierotti could cause some issues in the aerial ones, especially if the aforementioned Gallo is allowed to cross the ball to the back post. Pavlovic is very good in aerial duels, but this is one to keep an eye on.

Further up the pitch, Adrien Rabiot will be looking to make some runs into the Lecce penalty box, opening some space for his teammates. The experienced Lassana Coulibaly is playing on the same side as the Frenchman and will surely look to stop him.

Equally, Coulibaly isn’t afraid to get forward himself and it will be up to Rabiot (at least initially) to keep track of his runs. Two strong midfielders battling it out, in other words, which could make for an interesting evening.

Christian Pulisic is expected to get a chance from start and should thus be the source of creativiy for Milan when going forward. While Oumar Ngom will initially be the Lecce midfielder closest to him, the feeling is that the American could bump into Ivan Ilic a lot.

Since Pulisic likes to cut inside, Ilic will surely be forced to take a step up to stop him in his tracks. When in possession, the Serbian is the one who controls the play for Lecce so in the pressing phase, the No.11 could be up against him quite a lot.

Finally, Milan are hoping that Goncalo Ramos will get back to scoring tonight and while it’s truly 50-50 which centre-back he will be up against the most, I’m going to go for Tiago Gabriel here. He’s the star defender, after all, and tonight is a chance to impress the Rossoneri.

He has been linked with a January move to the club, but since some doubts have been expressed, he could prove that he would be the right addition for Ruben Amorim’s side. On the flip side, Ramos also has to prove that he’s the one.