Verona vs. AC Milan: Team News, Preview, Live Stream, TV Info
AC Milan look to maintain their lead over their pursuers for sixth as they visit last-place Verona.
Date: Monday, April 25
Time: 5 p.m. local time, 4 p.m. BST, 11 a.m. EDT
Venue: Stadio Marc'Antonio Bentegodi
TV Info: beIN Sports (US)
Live Stream: BT Sport Connect (UK), beIN Sports Connect (U.S.)
Take three of the Cristian Brocchi era at AC Milan is going to be critical.
After Sassuolo beat Torino 3-1 on Sunday, Milan's lead over the Neroverdi for sixth place shrank to one point. Unless they beat Juventus in the Coppa Italia final on May 21, the only way for the Rossoneri to reach European competition for the first time in three years will be to defend their lead in the sixth spot in the table.
That was Brocchi's task when he replaced Sinisa Mihajlovic two weeks ago. Things looked like they might be getting better in his first game in charge, a 1-0 win against Sampdoria in Genoa. But the Rossoneri couldn't build on that win in the midweek fixtures, limping their way to a goalless draw at home against Carpi—their second 0-0 scoreline in three meetings with the Biancorossi this year.
Milan looked utterly flat against an opponent struggling to beat the drop. They dominated possession, controlling 74.9 percent of it, according to WhoScored.com, but they often looked like they didn't know what to do with that possession. The ball seemed to be constantly cycling around an area 10 yards or so in front of the penalty area as players made lateral pass after lateral pass trying to find some place to force an opening.
They rarely did. While they did have 20 shots, only three of them were on target. Ordinarily that could be blamed solely on bad finishing, but an interesting statistic argues otherwise. Of those 20 shots, nine of them were blocked, which calls into question the quality of the chances the Rossoneri are manufacturing—and in turn whether what Brocchi is doing is really working.
Milan's lack of creative players who can break down set defenses has been their biggest weakness all year, and now Brocchi needs to compensate for that while at the same time playing the kind of attacking football that owner and president Silvio Berlusconi demands. That's going to be even harder with his one truly creative player, Giacomo Bonaventura, sidelined with an injury that could keep him out for the rest of the season.
Bonaventura's absence—and the abject failure of Kevin-Prince Boateng as trequartista on Thursday—leaves the attacking midfield role to Keisuke Honda, who will hope to feed the Milan strikers into scoring positions.
One potential boon to the Rossoneri is that they're playing rock-bottom Verona, who will be playing for their Serie A lives. They need both a win and Carpi to drop points in order to avoid relegation tomorrow. But regardless of the mathematics, Verona coach Luigi Delneri admitted in his pre-match press conference (h/t Football Italia) that "relegation is now certain."
The Mastiffs have scored the fewest goals in the league and conceded the third most. Not even last year's joint-capocannoniere, Luca Toni, could keep them afloat, and they've been in last place for almost the entire season, thanks in large part to the fact that the 38-year-old couldn't stay healthy.
The good news for Verona is that Milan's biggest problems this year have come against teams they should be beating on paper. That held true for Verona in December, when the Rossoneri blew a 1-0 lead after Nigel de Jong was sent off for giving away the tying penalty kick.
Form Lines
| Hellas Verona | AC Milan |
| L 1-0 @ Empoli | D 1-1 vs. Carpi |
| L 2-1 vs. Frosinone | W 1-0 @ Sampdoria |
| L 3-0 @ Napoli | L 2-1 vs. Juventus |
| W 1-0 @ Bologna | L 2-1 @ Atalanta |
| L 2-1 vs. Carpi | D 1-1 vs. Lazio |
Projected Lineups
| Hellas Verona (4-4-2) | AC Milan (4-3-1-2) |
| Gollini | Donnarumma |
| Pisano Bianchetti Moras Albertazzi | Abate Romagnoli Zapata Antonelli |
| Wszolek Marrone Ionita Emanuelson | Mauri Montolivo Kucka |
| Gomez Pazzini | Honda |
| Bacca Menez |
Unavailable
Verona: OUT: LB Mohamed Fares (injured), LB Samuel Souprayen (suspended), M Federico Viviani (suspended). DOUBTFUL: ST Luca Toni (injured), CB Filip Helander (injured).
AC Milan: OUT: FW M'Baye Niang (ankle), CM Andrea Bertolacci (muscle injury), M/FW Giacomo Bonaventura (hip/thigh), ST Mario Balotelli (suspended), CB Alex (suspended)
Key Players
If Verona are to have any chance at winning the game and staying alive in Serie A, they're going to have to score goals.
They've done that fewer times than anyone else in the league this season, scoring only 28—four fewer than the next lowest on the list.
With Toni unavailable for much of the year, Verona have relied on former Milan striker Giampaolo Pazzini for goals. This has come with mixed results. He scored four goals in the span of a month between mid-January and mid-February, but he's had extended dry spells and hasn't scored since the February 20, in the Verona derby against Chievo.
If Verona are to stay up, Pazzini needs to have some sort of impact on a Milan back line that will be missing a key contributor in Alex, who is suspended due to yellow-card accumulation.
Alternatives Cristian Zapata and Philippe Mexes are both mistake-prone, so Pazzini could have opportunities to sneak in. If he can take them, he'll have a shot at taking a bite out of his old club.
For Milan, no player is going to be more important than Honda.
With Bonaventura—who has contributed six goals and a team-high eight assists this term—likely out until the Coppa final, Honda is the only other player that Milan can fit into the attacking midfield position. He played there for four games early this season before Mihajlovic adopted the 4-4-2 formation he used for the majority of the season and pushed him out wide.
Now back in his more natural middle position, Honda is going to be critical as the link between the midfield and the forwards. With striker Carlos Bacca in need of service in order to be successful, he needs to create chances and unlock the Verona defense. If he doesn't, it could be another long slog of possession with no reward.
Key Matchup
Milan have been looking for a replacement for Andrea Pirlo since dumping the former Rossoneri legend in 2011. They looked to Riccardo Montolivo to fill that role when they signed him as a free agent in 2012.
The results of that have been mixed, to say the least.
He made up for a poor start to his first season in Milan with a nice finish, but the next year he was abysmal, and an injury in the run-up to the World Cup in 2014 saw him miss much of the 2014-15 season.
He's raised his game slightly this year, but he's still inconsistent with his passing, and every once in a while he can make the occasional catastrophic mistake, like he did at the very end of the game on Thursday when he got too fancy in his own half and was dispossessed by Marco Crimi, who would have put Carpi into the lead with only stoppage time to go had it not been for an incredible save by Gianluigi Donnarumma.
He'll have to help win the midfield battle against a Verona midfield that has been augmented by the January loan addition of Luca Marrone.
The Juventus loanee started his time at Verona with a bang, notching three assists in his second game with the club. He hasn't registered a counting stat like that since, but he's been on the field for all three of the team's wins this year and is ranked by WhoScored as their third-best player this year.
If the youngster can make life uncomfortable for Montolivo, he'll go a long way towards further incapacitating Milan's attack—something the Rossoneri can ill afford.
If Montolivo can get himself free and help direct the game, Milan's hold on the all-important sixth place in the table will be strengthened.
Odds (via Odds Shark)
Verona win: 15-4
Milan win: 2-3
Draw: 14-5
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