Recapping AC Milan Wastefulness in Loss to Fiorentina

Early in the second half of AC Milan's match against Fiorentina on Monday, it looked as though manager Filippo Inzaghi was on his way to a pivotal away victory. But less than 35 minutes after taking a 1-0 lead, the Rossoneri were staring at the wrong end of a 2-1 scoreline, and Inzaghi's position was in more peril than ever.

The loss was entirely avoidable, and the forwards were principally to blame.

Milan had the better of the first hour of play. They managed to slip numerous balls through Fiorentina's defensive line to hard-charging forwards Mattia Destro, Jeremy Menez and Keisuke Honda. But time and time again, the chances that those runs brought went begging due to poor judgement or poor execution.

The first real opportunity came 11 minutes in, when Honda latched on to the ball and charged down the right-hand side. The Japanese international was forced into a tight angle by the recovering defenders, and when the critical moment came, he made the wrong decision.

Rather than picking up his head and realizing that he had a teammate with a step on his man at the far post, Honda fired the ball from a tight angle straight at Norberto Neto. The Brazilian keeper made no mistake in parrying the ball away for a corner.

Two minutes later, an even better chance presented itself when Destro received the ball at the edge of the penalty area, forcing Neto to come off his line. He attempted to chip the keeper but instead put it right down his throat.

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The next 20 minutes were an exercise in futility. Milan's forwards managed to get the ball in good positions but completely failed to deliver a ball dangerous enough to create a true scoring chance. It didn't help that the three were getting caught offside with a fair bit of regularity.

By the half-hour mark, Milan's advantage had petered out, and for the next 15 minutes, the Viola managed to get in their own opportunities. They hit the bar in the 30th minute, and the Rossoneri were lucky to get to the half scoreless.

Eleven minutes into the second period, Milan's wastefulness was touched with good fortune. Against the run of play, Giacomo Bonaventura lined up a first-time shot after getting on the end of a Fiorentina deflection—it was an insane scuff. Had Destro not been directly in its path, the ball would have ended up 20 feet wide of the post.

As it happened, the ball went right at Inzaghi's new No. 9, and he instinctively stuck out a foot. The ball careened past Neto and into the net for the opening score. Ten minutes later, Destro, with some confidence now, skipped past two men and crossed for Menez, who just missed his control and allowed a Fiorentina counter-attack.

That was the last attack of meaning that Milan managed to mount. Desperate to keep pace with Lazio—who were 2-0 up on Torino—in the race for third in Serie A, the Viola pinned Milan back in search of goals.

The manner in which they came has now become typical.

The first goal, seven minutes from final time, came when Gonzalo Rodriguez soared over Ignazio Abate to head the ball past Diego Lopez.

Inzaghi quickly removed Abate—who must have been tiring in his first game back from a long-term injury—for Daniele Bonera, but the fresh legs did little to stem the purple tide hurtling towards Milan's goal.

Joaquin, who assisted on the equalizer, was the man who wove through the box to get to his head to the cross from Manuel Pasqual for what proved to be the winning goal.

Of all the defeats Inzaghi has endured, this one hurts the worst. With seven minutes left, he was on the verge of three crucial points. In those seven minutes, everything went cross-eyed.

Had Inzaghi's forwards managed to put away some of the chances that they created in that dominant spell of the first half, or had they created some more out of advantageous situations, the game could have taken on an entirely different tenor.

Now, their wastefulness may have spelled the end of Inzaghi's time as manager of AC Milan.