Milan’s late equaliser against Fiorentina tells tale of both teams’ underperformance this season | OneFootball

Sometimes a draw feels like a win, other times like a defeat. The nature of Sunday afternoon’s game between Fiorentina and AC Milan, however, meant that for both teams a point felt like… just that. The mutual sense of two points dropped was soothed by the keen awareness of the negativity a defeat would have inflicted on the respective clubs. Christopher Nkunku rifled an effort past David De Gea in the 90th minute at the Stadio Artemio Franchi to salvage a point for his side off the bench, enough to keep the gap with league leaders Inter to three points after their subsequent draw with Napoli the same evening. It was, nevertheless, an all too familiar tale of a lost opportunity against one of the division’s bottom teams – the reason Massimiliano Allegri’s men are currently the hunters rather than the hunted with regards to Serie A’s top spot.

The ‘bottom team’ in question, 18th-placed Fiorentina, will have been so hurt by yet more late heartbreak precisely because the perilous position they find themselves in is neither expected nor accepted in Florence. A torrid start to the season for the Tuscans saw them winless across their first 15 matches. A recent upturn in fortunes was nearly solidified with further momentum on Sunday, had they held on to the lead, but instead it was their own hauntingly familiar tale of late despair that stripped them of all three points. There was a mutual sense of déjà vu at full-time at the Franchi, in a game that did a lot to encapsulate the recurring disappointments (and some encouraging aspects) that have characterised both sides’ seasons so far.

One gained, too many dropped for Milan

For Milan, it is true that their current position, sitting in second place just three points off the top with half the season played – topped off by an 18-game unbeaten streak in Serie A – is a testament to the way Allegrismo has reinvigorated a team that finished an unacceptable eighth last year. That said, there will be an undeniable feeling amongst the Rossoneri that they could, and probably should, be in an even stronger position in the Scudetto hunt. This is not simply because of the number of points they have dropped, but because of who they have dropped them to.

Sunday’s stalemate means that the Rossoneri have dropped points to six of the bottom ten teams in the table. This constitutes 13 of the 17 points they have left behind them to date. Creditable draws away to Juventus and Atalanta are the only exceptions to an impressive list of victories against top-half teams that include Inter, Napoli, Roma, Lazio and Bologna. It has been the games they are expected to win with relative ease that Allegri’s men have struggled to cope with most.

Having to rely on a late equaliser to spare their blushes at the Franchi echoed precisely what had occurred at San Siro less than 65 hours previously. On Thursday night, it took a 92nd-minute Rafael Leao header to draw Milan level with a Genoa side that had kicked off the night in 17th, just two points above Fiorentina, who had not won a single game until December 21st. Even then, Il Diavolo were only spared the ignominy of defeat by the fact that Nicolae Stanciu inexplicably skied his 99th-minute penalty into the Milanese night as Genoa boss Daniele De Rossi watched on in bemused horror.

The Rossoneri’s pursuit of a 20th Scudetto has been hindered considerably by their results against the division’s newly promoted sides. The worrisome precedent was set on the opening weekend when Allegri’s return to the San Siro dugout was spoiled by a 2-1 loss to a pre-Jamie Vardy Cremonese, fresh from the Serie B play-offs. Thankfully for the Livorno-born mister, that was the only league defeat his team would suffer in the first half of the campaign.

Similar problems arose, however, when Sassuolo and Pisa came to town. Both games finished 2-2, with recurring themes of squandered chances and lax defending. The Pisa encounter was particularly concerning, on a night when victory would have sent them four points clear at the top. It took a 93rd-minute leveller from 21-year-old defender Zachary Athekame to snatch a draw from the jaws of defeat against the team that is currently marooned at the bottom of la classifica with just one win from twenty games to date.

Sunday, therefore, was far from the first time Milan have left it late to steal a point from a game they would have expected to take all three. For Fiorentina, however, the opposite problem of conceding late goals has been an exceedingly common trend across a campaign marred by on-field disappointments.

Florentine Failings

FLORENCE, ITALY – JANUARY 11: Moise Kean of ACF Fiorentina reacts during the Serie A match between ACF Fiorentina and AC Milan at Artemio Franchi on January 11, 2026 in Florence, Italy. (Photo by Gabriele Maltinti/Getty Images)

This was the second time La Viola had let a much-needed victory slip at the death in the space of five days, following Pedro Rodriguez’ 95th minute penalty that brought Lazio back level on Wednesday night in Rome. Only a few weeks previous, a still-winless Fiorentina had conceded a 93rd-minute winner at home to their immediate relegation rivals, Hellas Verona. Paolo Vanoli, the twice-capped Italy international who replaced Stefano Pioli in early November (the man who won the Scudetto with Milan in 2022 had himself only been in the job since the summer), was already beginning to have his position called into question less than six weeks into his reign.

Thankfully for Vanoli and Fiorentina, things have slowly stabilised since then, with the long-awaited first league win of the campaign coming emphatically as they thrashed Udinese 5-1 at the Franchi on December 21st. The fact that the Friuliani had their keeper sent off after just eight minutes at the Franchi may have finally represented the luck that had evaded the Tuscan side all season. Although that triumph was followed up by a defeat in Parma, La Viola bounced back with a 1-0 victory over Vardy’s Cremonese in their next home fixture, to which they almost added another two successive wins were it not for the late blows dished out by Lazio and Milan. Three unbeaten and eight points from five games is nevertheless a considerable improvement from the raging binfire that was the first half of the season.

While positives can be taken from Sunday’s encounter, it was the manner in which the points were dropped that will frustrate Vanoli’s side most. Not only was it a game in which the coach felt they did enough to win, but they came agonisingly close to retaking the lead twice in stoppage time (as Milan yet again nearly threw away the point after the near miss versus Genoa). First, Marco Brescianini, having just signed on loan from Atalanta, cracked the crossbar with a shot that could’ve so easily granted him a dream debut. Moments later, Moise Kean saw his name in lights when he was slipped in on goal, but Mike Maignan charged out to deny the Italian forward from a one-on-one situation.

The Rebuild:

Survival is by no means guaranteed for Fiorentina, despite the resources at their disposal, meaning it should never have been a legitimate concern in the first place, especially for a club that achieved four successive top-eight finishes and reached two European finals in the preceding years. The consequence of such an extensive winless streak at the start of the campaign, though, was a self-perpetuating doom spiral which, finally, they seem to have reversed.

While their new state-of-the-art training facility, Viola Park, is amongst the most modern and well-equipped in Italy, their stadium is a much more fitting reflection of where the club is. The Stadio Artemio Franchi has been a building site for the last 18 months, with their historic Curva Fiesole demolished in the summer of 2024 in favour of a more contemporary, roofed design that will move the fans closer to the pitch. The ultras have been displaced to the opposite Curva Ferrovia (Railway End), but this displacement has been felt as much in the spiritual as the physical sense – largely due to the perceived mismanagement and failed transfer activity from the sporting leadership that they believe is the catalyst for the on-pitch woes.

Daniele Pradè, Fiorentina’s sporting director, resigned in November after seven years in Florence, shouldering much of the responsibility for the club’s lacklustre situation, but that was not enough to save the man he had entrusted, Stefano Pioli, from suffering the chop a week later. Now, with the stadium rebuild suffering administrative delays to the project (in true Italian style), the vacant half-constructed, half-demolished stand that traditionally was the Franchi’s beating heart is emblematic of a club whose grand ambitions for the future stutter and stumble amidst the hard reality of the present.