The balance between risk and reward: Tactical analysis of AC Milan 3-1 Club Brugge | OneFootball

AC Milan got the ball rolling in their 2024-25 Champions League campaign with a 3-1 victory against Club Brugge at San Siro on Tuesday night.

Milan took the lead in a strange way as Christian Pulisic fired in a corner that beat everyone at the near post and nestled in directly. When Raphael Onyedika saw red for a challenge on Tijjani Reijnders with his studs, it looked like Paulo Fonseca’s sdie were well in control.

Nevertheless, the away side got themselves level through Sabbe after a well-worked goal, but then two substitutes – Noah Okafor and Samuel Chukwueze – each set up Tijjani Reijnders as the Rossoneri scored twice in quick succession to earn the victory.

Francesco Camarda made a record-breaking debut and was inches away from making Champions League history when he headed in a cross before VAR intervened to chalk it off for offside. Below is a tactical analysis from the game, courtesy of our writer Rohit Rajeev.

Brugge’s approach

Since the days of Philippe Clement being head coach, Brugge have always been a team that played deeper. Their starting formation was a 4-4-2 but off the ball they took a 5-3-2 approach with Onyedika nestling into the defence and acting as a quasi centre-back.

Their defensive height line is estimated to be 33.6 metres from the goal which is quite deep. In other words they parked the bus, hoping to take advantage of inaccuracies from Milan to launch counter-attacks at speed.

Milan’s set-up

When Milan would try to build, Brugge would use a man-marking approach. To create a numerical superiority Mike Maignan would step up and be the third centre-back which means it created a 5v4 situation.

Milan would try to bait the press especially through Matteo Gabbia who would keep the ball at his feet and look for openings in midfield. The situation below shows it well, where a pocket of space opened up for Youssouf Fofana who receives it, turns, runs and shoots but drags the attempt wide.

Positional switches on the left flank were very common. With the concept of positional play of Fonseca coming into full swing, we can see in two separate instances how Rafael Leao and Theo Hernandez switched positions.

Milan used a hybrid model of pressing. Higher up the pitch they deplpyed a man-marking approach while deeper in the pitch they used a zonal marking system.

As much as Okafor’s quick feet and dribbling skills were on display for the second goal, some credit must be given to Pulisic for his brilliant run to create the pocket of space inside the box.

The third goal showed Chukwueze’s tactical intelligence and he is showing improvement under Fonseca. He cleverly covers the passing option of the player on the ball and intercepts it and makes a run. Special mention to Morata making the run to clear space for Reijnders again.

Risk versus reward

One of the concerns fans had was how easily Brugge were able to create chances against Milan, even getting themselves level when they were a man down.

According to FBRef, who use data from Opta, the Belgian champions only had an xG (Expected Goals) of 0.6 which means they didn’t even generate enough chances to score one goal and would have had to score from low-quality opportunities. For example, Sabbe’s goal came from an xG of 0.1.

Against Lecce – a team that played very similarly to how Brugge did – they had the same opportunities, which to the naked eye seems dangerous but again the quality of chances created were not high.

Brugge played a deep block and tried to suck Milan into attacking and the Rossoneri thus had to be proactive and take the risks by committing extra men forward, sometimes leaving spaces between the lines.

With Brugge defending in numbers, the only option was to try and at least achieve parity in the final third, with the risk factor being allowing the same situation at the other end.

Of course, the analysis team of Milan would have analysed this and made a risk assessment but it pretty much was a high-risk high-reward kind of game, especially when opposition park the bus.

This is something to embrace in the Champions League, especially with the likes of Slovan Bratislava, Dinamo Zagreb and Red Star to come. Teams will sit back to frustrate, and when numbers are committed a gunfight can sometimes emerge.