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AC Milan return to play on Saturday, when they welcome struggling Spezia at San Siro, after a league loss the previous weekend was followed by dramatic triumph in Europe.
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The Rossoneri rebounded from a disheartening Serie A loss to Torino by defeating RB Salzburg to advance to the Champions League, and they now face a team that has yet to register a point or even a goal on the road.
Match preview
Requiring just a draw to reach the Champions League’s knockout stage for the first time in nine years, Milan merely had to hold Salzburg at arm’s length when the teams met at San Siro on Wednesday evening.
Posting consecutive victories in the continent’s top club competition for the first time since 2011, the seven-time European champions are now in the hat for Monday’s draw, but will first aim to recover from a rare slip-up in Serie A.
Milan sat second in the top flight before travelling to Turin last weekend, but after making several changes to his lineup, coach Stefano Pioli came unstuck: his side lost both for the first time in 18 Serie A away matches and just the second in the league this season.
If they stumble again, Milan would lose successive Serie A matches for the first time in a year, so Pioli will now turn to his usually watertight defence on San Siro soil: in 2022, they have kept nine clean sheets at home, the joint-most in the league; only Liverpool and Real Sociedad have recorded more throughout the top five European Leagues.
However, Saturday’s visitors Spezia are one of only two teams to have beaten the Rossoneri at home this year, with a 2-1 success in February being followed by Napoli’s victory earlier this season.
Team News
Amid a packed pre-World Cup schedule of five games in a fortnight, Milan are set to make several changes to the side that started Wednesday’s win over Salzburg, with veteran striker Olivier Giroud an obvious candidate to be rested after completing 90 minutes.
Divock Origi should therefore return to the first XI on Saturday, having scored on his full debut against Monza last month.
Spezia are the side against which Rafael Leao has scored his most Serie A goals (three), and the Portuguese powerhouse has scored five times and laid on four assists in the league this season – only Khvicha Kvaratskhelia and Sergej Milinkovic-Savic have been involved in more.
While Giroud and Leao have been particularly prolific for the hosts, Spezia’s M’bala Nzola has netted exactly half of his club’s goals in Serie A this season, though each of them have come on home soil.
Though the Angola striker scored in last week’s loss to Fiorentina, he has failed to find the net in successive appearances since January 2021.
Nzola’s likely support act, captain Emmanuel Gyasi, has yet to either score or assist a single goal this term, but should still start on Saturday; Milan loanee Daniel Maldini features on the bench.
Possible starting lineup:
| AC Milan | Spezia |
|---|---|
| Tatarusanu, Ciprian | Dragowski, Bartlomiej |
| Hernandez, Theo | Kiwior, Jakub |
| Tomori, Fikayo | Nikolaou, Dimitrios |
| Kalulu, Pierre | Ampadu, Ethan |
| Calabria, Davide | Bourabia, Mehdi |
| Tonali, Sandro | Holm, Emil |
| Bennacer, Ismael | Agudelo, Kevin |
| De Ketelaere, Charles | Bastoni, Simone |
| Krunic, Rade | Reca, Arkadiusz |
| Leao, Rafael | Nzola, M’bala |
| Giroud, Olivier | Gyasi, Emmanuel |
Probabilities
AC Milan = 67.4%
Draw = 19.4%
Spezia = 13.1%
Prediction
AC Milan 2-0 Spezia
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