With an easy 3-0 victory over bottom-of-the-table Empoli on Sunday, AC Milan remain on course to clinch their spot in the Serie A Champions League race.
Ruben Loftus-Cheek’s magnificent first goal and Olivier Giroud‘s penalty kick in the 31st minute put third-place Milan ahead, and Chaka Traore’s two final minutes sealed the victory.
Milan capitalised on the points that their closest competitors dropped, despite missing a number of players due to injuries and the Africa Cup of Nations.
After Saturday’s 1-0 loss at Sassuolo, Stefano Pioli’s club leads fourth-place Fiorentina by six points. With their tie against Genoa, Bologna is now one point behind them in fifth place.
Despite a difficult season marred by injuries and doubts over Pioli’s future, Milan won their fifth straight game overall on Sunday.
We experienced a challenging time there. Theo Hernandez, filling in at centre back once more, remarked, “We never paid attention to what other people were saying; instead, we got down to hard work, and that’s why we won today.
France international Hernandez, who is a daring left-back by trade, had to shift to the centre of defence due to an injury crisis that left Pierre Kalulu, Fikayo Tomori, and Malick Thiaw out of the starting lineup for Pioli.
Milan is currently four points behind second-place Juventus, who play Salernitana later on Sunday, and nine points behind league leaders and local rivals Inter Milan.
Nonetheless, Pioli should be encouraged by the manner in which they played despite having so many players down and also give Rafael Leao, who has been inconsistent recently, credit for Loftus-Cheek’s excellent first goal.
In the eleventh minute, Leao made a trademark run down the left wing and then squared the ball perfectly to his English colleague, who finished with a goal that was his second in Serie A.
After that, Giroud scored his first league goal in almost two months after it was determined that Youssef Maleh had handled an overhead kick by Loftus-Cheek.
In the 71st minute, Hernandez superbly denied Francesco Caputo’s close-range finish, denying Empoli a chance to respond.
However, 19-year-old substitute Traore opened his league account by capping off a brilliant team effort and a counterattack, only days after scoring in the 4-1 Italian Cup victory over Cagliari.
