Traveling to the fateful city of Romeo and Juliet fame, Milan were missing seven starters. Our fate seemed written in the stars, but it was our bench players who earned all of the love today. Verona were left empty-handed, and it was Milan who took all three points back home. After such seemingly bad luck with injuries once again this week, this match was a bit like star-crossed love.
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| So much love today |
The game started out as expected, Lasagna tried to go in on goal head on with Gigio, but the chance went wide. Gigio gave us a scare by grabbing his thigh early on, but he was able to continue for the whole match. Then, in the 27th minute, after being fouled by Magnani, Krunic stepped up and took an amazing free kick. As unlikely as a Capulet falling in love with a Montague, he opened our hearts and the scoring with a perfect goal. 1-0 Milan. Krunic would take another great shot and clear a ball at the goalpost on the other end as well, he was on fire.
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| Perfect free kick |
Just after the half, another unlikely hero, Dalot, took a pass from Saelemaekers, ran in and shot, and shocked Silvestri (and probably the world.) 2-0 Milan. Perfect timing as we head into our Europa League match with his parent club. Juric put on two sets of double subs, but Milan's mentality was just too overwhelming. The "Sunday squad" I mentioned in the preview showed up. Not the hapless, disjointed team we saw on Wednesday. We may have been almost an entirely different team to the one that played in Roma last week, but it was the same mentality.
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| Yeah, it was like that |
Perhaps it was Ibrahimovic's inspiring speech at the Sanremo festival last night that got the team going. He also traveled from Sanremo late last night to Verona to be with the team today. Perhaps it was Ibrahimovic that Krunic and Dalot channeled today, but it was amazing. The mentality that has gotten this team to this point was evident in every player, no matter how much time they have spent on the bench this season waiting to shine.
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| Hearts united |
Leao had to be frustrated, as he did everything possible to get on the stat sheet today, and also took one for the team in the most painful of ways. But even without him scoring, Milan were able to pull off a miracle. In fact, Verona took 10 shots, but had no shots on target. We completely blanked the team that were 2-0 up by halftime in our first match with them this season.
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| Bossing it again. |
Just like the most unlikely of romances, but all of the tragedy remained in Verona. Milan won a match that was very important to keep us in the running for top four, and also for mentality for the difficult matches still in front of us. And they did it with bench players, with beautiful goals from the most unlikely of heroes. Against all odds and enough injuries to make a love-sick girl want to die, Milan turned this match into a beautiful story of star-crossed love.
This post inspired by the music of Josh Groban's "Un Giorno per Noi"