Tottenham 1, AC Milan 0: So That Happened

Milan have picked up right where they left off last season, with missed chances the theme for the night. With only 44% possession, Milan took 16 shots, yet only five were on target. Yet the far more clinical Spurs took only five shots, yet three were on target. Couple our plague of not being able to score with our impressively poor defensive errors, and you get an unnecessary friendly loss. Yeah, so that happened.

It only took a couple of minutes to wipe the smiles off of their faces

Many Milan fans have already given cement shoes to Bonucci and dropped him in the ocean. But he is painfully still alive, and at least for a few more hours, ours. I can only imagine what he thought watching the comedy of errors that was our defense from start to finish from his spot on the bench. When Abate is your best defender on the night, you have a serious problem.

There's a new sheriff in town, only he played more like a deputy

So it’s no surprise, really, that right after the half, Calabria sent a perfect cross to N’Koudou, and neither Musacchio nor Gigio were able to shut him down as he punished Milan. 1-0 Tottenham. That was all it took to sink our ship. Which is night and day different than when Bonucci was on the pitch last week. He helped steady Musacchio and provided those last ditch blocks when necessary, without even breaking a sweat. And that is what was sorely missing tonight. So we’d best be getting used to it. As a consolation, Gigio did shut down  the shot from Calabria's other glaring blunder, a backpass in the 55th. But ideally we see the Calabria from last week, not the one from tonight.

"It wasn't entirely shambolic" #FakeQuotes

Cutrone left more regrets and missed chances on that pitch than Gattuso’s paced steps. And that’s a lot of steps. Suso tried desperately to set him up time after time, and they just couldn’t connect. Kessie also had a couple of great chances but went just over or just wide. So close, and yet so far. Halilovic and Tsadjout both got their Milan senior team debuts and saw a few minutes, fulfilling a week-long dream of mine, but neither were able to impress particularly. Kessie and Calhanoglu were both solid, so the night wasn't a total loss.

Not the debut fans dreamed of, but it's a start

If the deals in progress come through, Milan will gain a clinical finisher, something we’ve been missing for some time now. We will also gain another young, talented center back. But we lose a captain and world class center back, something we desperately needed to hold onto for even just one more year. Tonight was evidence of what we’ll be missing. I’m not sure if a clinical striker will be enough to cover our defensive blunders. But it’s not as if we have a choice, Bonucci has asked to leave. I never try to read too much into a friendly, but tonight gave us a preview of what we are losing and the steep climb we have to re-organize our defense. Hopefully we don’t drop too many points before that happens. Otherwise, we’ll be looking as fragile and incompetent in Serie A as we did tonight vs. Tottenham’s B team. Yeah, so that happened.

This post inspired by the music of Lush

Our next match is a friendly

Milan vs. Barcelona

Saturday, August 4 • 5:05pm PDT (Sunday, August 5 • 2:05am CEST)

Levi’s Stadium, Santa Clara, CA, USA