AC Milan Does the Minimum in Beating Sampdoria, Saving Sinisa Mihajlovic

Seeing Sampdoria again was probably a salve for sore eyes for AC Milan. Three weeks earlier, the Rossoneri hosted the Blucerchiati at the San Siro and comprehensively thrashed them. From the first minute on, Milan absolutely dominated the match en route to a 4-1 victory.

It was their last win going into Thursday's matchup with Samp in the Coppa Italia round of 16. That game had been followed by a surprisingly limp performance in the Coppa against Crotone. They were lucky to escape with a 3-1 extra-time win over the Serie B contenders. Their next two league games were similarly disappointing, especially considering the fact they were facing against teams in the relegation zone.

A 0-0 draw against top-flight newcomers Carpi was followed by a 1-1 stalemate while dropping to 10 men against a Verona side that hasn't won a game all season. Reports swirled that team owner Silvio Berlusconi was furious with coach Sinisa Mihajlovic. Tuttosport reported (h/t Football Italia) that if the Serbian manager didn't win his last two games before the Christmas break, he would not have a job when the calendar turned.

So no pressure.

Milan went to the Stadio Luigi Ferraris and won 2-0. But it wasn't the kind of victory they would've enjoyed in Milan. This win seemed less enthusiastic, less purposeful. In truth, the scoreline may have flattered the Rossoneri quite a bit.

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One credit to Mihajlovic is he learned his lesson from the previous Coppa match. Faced with second-tier opposition in the last round, he rotated his entire squad. None of the starters played. The result was a lineup completely devoid of chemistry and full of error-prone bench fodder such as Cristian Zapata.

Thursday's lineup was quite different. Alessio Romagnoli started in defense. Andrea Bertolacci anchored the center of midfield. Giacomo Bonaventura was out wide. Carlos Bacca and M'Baye Niang—who are starting to look like Milan's best strike pairing—were up front.

Even then, chances were few and far between for Milan in the first half. In fact, Sampdoria had the better of what few chances came up at all. Two minutes in, Milan let a man behind them, but the through ball that came in didn't have enough steam on it to carry the striker past his defender.

Two minutes later, Vincenzo Montella's men broke out after a Milan free kick, but Roberto Soriano totally missed the wide-open Luis Muriel and tried to finish the run himself, getting fouled just outside the box in the process. There was further danger at the end of the half, when both Muriel and Carlos Carbonaro forced saves out of Christian Abbiati.

Milan, on the other hand, looked unfocused. They would do something positive and in the next moment do something baffling—like in the seventh minute, when Alessio Cerci showed good strength and technique to keep possession of the ball in his own half, only to send a long diagonal pass to the defender waiting in the center circle.

Bonaventura did trouble Emiliano Viviano from a tight angle in the 23rd minute, and Niang sent in a wicked curler two minutes later that just missed the far post.

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Things changed five minutes after halftime. Bertolacci started a move with some neat footwork, then got the ball to Bacca, who fired a pinpoint through ball to Niang. One-on-one with Viviano, the Frenchman made no mistake and put his team into the lead.

Fifteen minutes later came a moment that should have changed the game. Ervin Zukanovic dropped Juraj Kucka to the ground with a late tackle, and referee Domenico Celi produced a quick yellow card. The Bosnian defender was furious and let the referee know it. Celi hadn't even put the yellow back in his pocket before raising it again and sending him off.

It was a terrible display of refereeing. Unless Zukanovic said something truly foul, Celi should have had thicker skin rather than make such a match-changing decision in the heat of the moment.

Except the card didn't really change the game. A listless game simply continued. Sampdoria simply gave up, but Milan didn't press their man advantage to any real degree. If anything, they sank to the level of their hosts, playing with a total lack of intensity. It took them 20 minutes after Zukanovic's dismissal to truly threaten Sampdoria's goal, when Niang flashed a cross just past Bacca.

It was the complete opposite of the way the team responded to the sending off of Nigel de Jong on Sunday. After that, Milan pressed hard and dominated the remainder of the match, even at a man disadvantage. But on Thursday they did exactly the opposite.

Rather than elevate their game, they played down to their slumping opposition. Sampdoria had the look of a team that has completely given up—similar to how Milan looked at certain points late last season. Instead of capitalizing on that and putting a foot on their throat—the way Juventus had done to Torino on Wednesday after the Granata went down a man—they didn't up their game.

By the time Sampdoria realized they were about to be eliminated from the tournament with five minutes left, the game was still in the balance. It took until the third of four minutes of stoppage time for Bacca to seal the game after receiving a neat pass from Keisuke Honda.

This game will go down as a success for Milan. The upsets that have occurred in this round have worked to their advantage as well. They will play Carpi, who upset Fiorentina on Wednesday, in the quarterfinals, and if they advance, they will face the winner of the tie between second-tier Spezia and Lega Pro Cinderella team Alessandria.

But if they produce the kind of display they showed at the Marassi, they will be ripe for an upset of their own. Milan had every advantage in this game. They were playing a struggling team adapting to a new coach. They played the last half an hour with an extra man. But at the end of the day, they only put the game to bed in stoppage time. Rather than kick into third gear, they stayed in neutral.

That's a concern. If they want to regain their old place among Serie A's elite, they need to start showing the killer edge that teams such as Juventus display in spades. That certainly wasn't on display against Samp—and it could have cost them. An improvement in this area is needed.