Milan 0, Benevento 1: Dark Magic

It’s the only explanation: Dark magic. Those witches put a hex on Milan. How else do you explain losing at home to the 20th place team, who were on 10 men, and have the worst defense in the league this season, having conceded 78 goals? How can even Milan, for whom scoring has not been easy this year, not score on that team? At least take a point? And now we are the only team in Serie A to not beat Benevento this year. We were the laughing stock of Serie A when we played them in November, but now we just sad and pathetic, like the guy in this video.

Is there an apology that they could give that would be acceptable after that performance?

There are some games for which there are few words. This was one of them. We took 21 shots, with six on target. They took five. With only the one on target. You’d have better odds of winning the lottery while being struck by lightning than seeing that happen. But it did happen, and it felt more like having your soul ripped out, devoured by Dementors, then vomited back up only to be run over by a train. And that was just the first half.

Speaking of soul, Gattuso claims the team have none. But six days ago, we did, vs. Napoli. If he could step back and take a more objective look, he might notice that the team are simply playing to their opponents, and have been since the international break. Missing players or not, he tried a new formation, and it didn’t work. It’s not all about the soul. And don’t get me started on his subs in this match.

Gattuso demonstrating how much Milan's performance sucked today

But at the end of the day, a single Iemmello goal in the 29th sunk Milan at the San Siro. Even Diabaté, their striker with insane form of late, tried to help us by coming on as a sub and then getting himself sent off for a first then second yellow in less than 20 minutes. But we couldn’t even help ourselves. Congratulations to Benevento for a deserved and historic win, they absolutely earned the three points. It feels like Gattuso has hit a wall tactically, I don’t think he knows how to fix this. We’ve gone six straight games without a win, if we keep going, we’ll beat Oddo’s losing record over at Udinese. If we’re not careful, we’ll be like Inter last year and get no Europa League, then go on to do better next year. Wait, that’s not Milan’s way, we like the hard way. But still, this match was just inexplicable. Or maybe we were just privy to some very dark magic.

This post inspired by the music of Nitzer Ebb’s “Join in the Chant”

Our next match is

Serie A Week 35

Bologna vs. Milan

Sunday, April 29 • 15:00 CEST (9am EDT)