Roma - Milan by the numbers: Three key figures from Sunday night’s domination

We missed last week’s piece about the Europa League’s match and we need to apologise for that, but now we’re back!

Nobody, or at least only some optimist, thought AC Milan could come back from Rome with the three points and another clean sheet, but this is what happened Sunday night at the Stadio Olimpico! The Rossoneri gave everything they had and defeated AS Roma with the result of 0-2 thanks to an amazing team performance. This team seems to be improving match after match and shows a lot of determination, just like its coach did when he was a player, but let’s see what the numbers say about this game!

5 - Five (!) clean sheets in a row. We have to go back to the 1-1 draw against Udinese to see the last ball that crossed Milan’s goal line and it happened to be an unfortunate situation. Gianluigi Donnarumma had a quiet night despite Roma’s 18 total attempts, since just 3 of the went on target, and it was thanks to the impressive performance by Alessio Romagnoli, Leonardo Bonucci and Davide Calabria. We didn’t mention Ricardo Rodriguez because his game was average, but it’s good to see him play better and better, even in the defensive phase.

40% - Milan’s scoring percentage against Roma. We keep talking about how efficient this team has become game after game and this was not an exception. Despite leaving the control of the game to their opponents, the Rossoneri still managed to execute their game plan alternating quick counterattacks and good ball movement. The key was the consistency in switching side using very accurate long balls, which is mainly thanks to Suso, Hakan Çalhanoğlu and Giacomo Bonaventura that this happened. It seems obvious but the Rossoneri could not do it without Patrick Cutrone and Davide Calabria, of course.

9 - The Rossoneri dribbled past an opponent 9 times, which is almost 70% of their attempts. Milan has never been so efficient in 1vs1 situations in the last few seasons and it looked like nobody except for Suso or Jack could do it. Now we see Çala, Kessie, Biglia and even the defenders use their skills to dribble past an opponent as a sign of confidence and great conditioning.

Now the Rossoneri will meet Lazio as they try to qualify to the Coppa Italia final and secure a spot in a European competition next season.