GdS: Milan’s difficult relationship with the Coppa Italia and why it could save the season | OneFootball

AC Milan do not have a great relationship with the Coppa Italia, and yet this season they might need it to try and save things a little.

Milan have won the competitive five times, which is less than Napoli and Fiorentina (6), Lazio (7), Roma and Inter (9) and Juventus (15). They raised the last one to the sky in 2003, with Carlo Ancelotti as coach, a success overshadowed by the triumph in the Champions League beating Juventus in the final.

The Coppa Italia was useful to Milan in the 1970s during a less glorious era, albeit a decade that ended with the star-earning 10th Scudetto that arrived only in 1979. In the seventies, Milan won the Coppa in 1972, 1973 and 1977.

Fast-forward to today and there are some parallels. Milan are struggling in the league: they are eighth, seven points behind fourth place, with one less game played. In the Champions League they lost to Dinamo Zagreb and condemned themselves to the play-offs.

The five signings in the winter market – Walker, Gimenez, Joao Felix, Bondo and Sottil – and the five sales – Morata, Calabria, Bennacer, Okafor and Zeroli – are incontrovertible proof of how wrong the summer was. If you need a revolution in January, it means you made the wrong choices in July.

Neither Gimenez nor Joao Felix, the forwards who will have to revive the arid Milan attack, will be announced in the starting eleven tonight against Roma in the quarter-final. Felix is ​​described as being behind in terms of condition, Gimenez is fresh from a muscle injury, but should get some minutes.

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It is a straight knockout game without extra-time, meaning that in the event of a draw penalties will be taken immediately. There is no margin for error therefore, and the winner will face the side that emerges in the other quarter-final: Inter vs. Lazio.

Roma were in chaos before Claudio Ranieri arrived, with the Coppa Italia a chance for them to salvage things domestically too. He has already announced that from July he will take on a managerial role, as a link between the pitch and the club.

Winning the Coppa Italia – it would be his second personal one, after the one with Fiorentina in 1996 – would give him a magnificent exit. It is no coincidence that Ranieri seems inclined to field the best team, without Mancini because he is suspended.