Siena v Milan: Doh!

By: Martha | September 15th, 2007

Milan, playing without the resting Massimo Oddo, Ricky Kaka and Andrea Pirlo, threw away so many gilt-edge chances in the first 10 minutes that a Siena goal seems almost inevitable; such wastefulness almost never goes unpunished. Plus, Milan were making terrible decisions with the ball, passing up wide open people to shoot from long-range through three defenders (I’m looking at you, Gourcuff) with ludicrous frequency. Eventually, Massimo Maccarone took advantage of an impressive pair of errors by Dida and Kakha Kaladze to put Siena ahead in the 25th minute (albeit from an offside position), and the Tuscan club were organized enough in defense (and Milan wasteful enough in attack) that it actually looked like they might hang onto the lead.

In the second half, Milan probably had over 70% of the possession and looked increasingly dangerous, particularly as Siena’s defense started to crumble and resort to hacking people down rather than actually playing the ball. Goalkeeper Dimitrios Eleftheropoulos (WHERE is Alex Manninger?!) was incredibly sharp, though, coming off his line repeatedly to intercept crosses and once diving at Pippo Inzaghi’s feet, getting a kick in the head as a reward. They couldn’t keep it up, though, and Clarence Seedorf skimmed the bar with a free kick from the top of the area just minutes before an injury time free kick led to a Nesta piledriver off the rebound and snatched a (deserved, albeit sloppily so) point for the Rossoneri. Seedorf almost got Milan the win when he beat Eleftheropoulos with another free kick right at the death, but his shot rebounded off the bar and somehow stayed out of the goal.

In other news, Emerson made his debut for Milan and looked good to me. Despite moving at the pace you’d expect from an old, unfit man, most of his passes were inch-perfect, and he made some crucial tackles when Siena looked to be rising into the attack again. (Of course, I’ve always liked him in spite of that whole Roma and Juve thing, so my evaluation might be a little biased.) Also, Gila was mostly useless again, failing to get hold of a couple great early chances and fading out of the game in the second half. Poor man.