AC Milan kicked off their Serie A season with a victory away at Bologna after putting together a well-rounded effort.
Christian Pulisic and Olivier Giroud, both formerly of Chelsea, scored the goals. They worked together beautifully to set up Pulisic’s spectacular goal, which came after Giroud’s earlier effort had put the visitors ahead. Ruben Loftus-Cheek, another ex-Chelsea player, began for Milan but had a rather quiet night in the middle of the pitch.
In the first game of the 2023–2024 Serie A season, AC Milan defeated a Bologna team who played with a lot of heart but didn’t have much bite by virtue of their clinical performance.
The strain was on the team coached by Stefano Pioli because Milan was playing last after the opening weekend of the season’s seven other games all produced winners. However, after Olivier Giroud scored the opening goal, the outcome was never in doubt.
New contract inking Soon after that, Christian Pulisic scored for the Rossoneri for the first time, and after that, the away team always looked like they had a better chance of scoring than Bologna did to add another goal.
Colleague newcomer to summer Tijjani Reijnders also blended in well with the Milan midfield and was instrumental in setting up Olivier Giroud for the game’s first goal. Ruben Loftus-Cheek also saw action in the engine room for the Rossoneri.
The English midfielder traveled to Italy in search of a new beginning, but despite his best efforts, he was unable to have an impact on the game before being substituted out with just under 20 minutes remaining.
Bologna has reason to be pleased with their performance, particularly in the first half, but Thiago Motta will likely be concerned by their lack of goal threat in the majority of situations since Marko Arnautovic was substituted off. Daniel Ndoye, the new acquisition, did a good job of adjusting to playing in the middle of the pitch, while Lewis Ferguson, who played alongside him, occasionally posed a threat. The home fans was very loud.
However, neither of them were successful in creating enough scoring opportunities for the team’s new starting striker, Joshua Zirkzee. The Dutchman only had two goals to his name during the previous campaign, but now that Arnautovic has moved on, the Dutchman will seek to be the primary goal scorer for Bologna in 2023/24.
Although he gave a spirited performance and was always hunting for runs off the Milan backline, he was unable to deliver a quality end product on the few occasions when he did receive the ball.
Bologna finished the previous season only two points shy of qualifying for European football; but, with Arnautovic and Gary Medel having moved on, they will need Zirkzee to make a significant contribution and Ndoye to build on his play from today.
They weren’t that much poorer than Milan in the middle third of the pitch, but there was a staggering efficiency gap between the two teams in the final third.
Before Pulisic delivered a deep cross into the box that Reijnders did exceptionally well to reach, Milan appeared to be passing about the perimeter of the box without causing any danger.
Giroud was able to get to the ball first and fire it past a stunned Lukasz Skorupski because the ball was headed back across the six-yard box and through a sea of defenders from Bologna.
The second goal, which was scored by Pulisic with a thunderous strike after he had driven from deep and played a one-two with Giroud, left Skorupski with little opportunity to make a save.
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