Carlos Bacca: How Will AC Milan's New Striker Fit in Sinisa Mihajlovic's Scheme?

AC Milan had an inauspicious start to the summer transfer window, but the market is finally starting to set up for them. Rather than Jackson Martinez, the star attraction of Milan's silly season will be Carlos Bacca, the Colombian striker whose capture, pending a medical examination, was announced by the team's website on Tuesday.

Bacca has made a name for himself over the last two seasons, helping Sevilla win back-to-back Europa League titles. This season, he starred in Europe and in La Liga, scoring 20 times in Spain and seven times in the Europa League. He capped his year with a tour de force in the Europa League final against Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk.

The underdog Ukrainians struck early against the Spaniards, but Bacca took control. He assisted on the equaliser then scored a go-ahead goal just two minutes later. Dnipro evened things up again before half-time, and the game looked like it had a chance to go to extra time before Bacca chased the ball down and tipped it past a charging goalkeeper for the winning goal in Sevilla's 3-2 triumph.

Michael Steele/Getty Images

Sky Sports had linked Bacca to Manchester United and Liverpool last week. That he decided to leave Sevilla—forsaking his first foray into Champions League competition—was an interesting choice for the player.

It's even more interesting that he chose Milan, who aren't in Europe at all, rather than United, who made it back to the playoff round this year, or even Liverpool, who can make up for the lack of European football this year with the glamour of the Premier League.

This can be taken as a sign that Sinisa Mihajlovic can get a target like him to buy into his project even without European competition. That's something that Milan fans were concerned about when they had to go to plan B after failing to entice Carlo Ancelotti back to the San Siro.

His arrival also provides the team with their first true center-forward since the departure of Zlatan Ibrahimovic in 2012.

Bacca is often thought of as a pure finisher. He's not a high-percentage passer the way Zlatan is—WhoScored.com clocked him at 67.5 percent last season—but he also shows a knack for making the right one at the right time. That's evident in the nine assists he's racked up in the last two years in La Liga.

Now that he's a Milan player, Mihajlovic must fit him into his team. Considering what Bacca is used to, that may take some time.

Gabriele Maltinti/Getty Images

A look at Sevilla's team page on WhoScored.com shows that Unai Emery used a 4-2-3-1 formation in 33 of 38 league games (slightly less than 87 percent of the time) and in 14 of 15 games in the Europa League. The take here: Bacca has spent much of his time in Seville as a lone striker.

At Sampdoria, Mihajlovic split almost evenly between using two strikers and one—although he settled into a 4-3-1-2 toward the end of the year, planting Luis Muriel behind Samuel Eto'o and another in his deep quiver of strikers.

If he continues to use that formation as he goes to Milan, Mihajlovic is going to have to find someone to pair Bacca with. Fellow new signing Luiz Adriano is a candidate, as is Alessio Cerci, who could look to recreate the chemistry he had with Ciro Immobile last year at Torino with Bacca. Stephan El Shaarawy also showed some ability in the center in Cesare Prandelli's Italy setup.

However, Mihajlovic can also modify his system to fit his new jewel. When he arrived at Sampdoria in 2013, he installed a 4-2-3-1, which contributed to the emergence of Manolo Gabbiadini and Eder. That formation would maximize El Shaarawy and Jeremy Menez, who could claim the wings with Keisuke Honda occupying a more natural position as a central attacking midfielder.

A lot will depend on how things start looking in preseason training. If Bacca manages to find chemistry with one of his mates on the forward line, Mihajlovic can use the 4-3-1-2 that he finished the season with at Sampdoria. But if nothing develops, Mihajlovic is the kind of coach who can make adjustments and move his pieces around to the spots that best suit them.

Bacca is undoubtedly a plus buy for Milan and can be made into a cornerstone of Milan's rebuilding process. The next few months of pre-season training will be key as Mihajlovic judges how to best use Bacca to propel the downtrodden club back to the top of the table.