To preserve the Frenchman room for turnover, but so far the substitutes have not been up to the task
On Saturday 30 September, when Milan host Lazio, Olivier Giroud will celebrate his 37th birthday. It’s unlikely that Pioli will give him some rest: against a big team like him he will want to field his best men. The point is that behind Giroud, there is a void of goals. Olivier compensates and fills the area, but it can’t be enough: the identity card and the number of candles on the cake don’t lie. So far, at 36 years, 11 months and 21 days, the Rossoneri number 9 has been involved in five matches with the club and one with the French national team. He has always started for Milan: in the four championship games (replaced when the result was already clear) and in the last Champions League match, in which he remained on the pitch for 90 minutes. In the time available he scored 4 goals and served 2 assists. With France he had played the first 26 minutes of the match against Ireland and left due to a sore ankle. “There is a lot of playing, especially the national teams, and the risks increase,” admitted Pioli. His problem is finding valid alternatives: the indefatigable Giroud will necessarily need to catch his breath. If he is needed against Lazio and certainly in the following Champions League match against Dortmund, a turnover on Wednesday in Cagliari is conceivable.
SUBSTITUTES
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Who should you entrust area tasks to? Okafor has four appearances in Serie A but we need to do the math carefully: he remained on the pitch for a total of just 67 minutes, all as a substitute. Just over an hour without ever leaving its mark. Curiosity: Okafor had convinced Milan to invest in him after scoring a goal as an opponent at San Siro.
STOP AT ZERO
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With the Rossoneri he has not yet conceded an encore and apart from a yellow card against Roma, a match in which he offered a contribution as an added midfielder rather than a thoroughbred striker, there are few other notes worth mentioning. An attacking wildcard, but not a top scorer: at most he reached 9 in the league with Salzburg. Never in double figures. There is even less to report about Jovic’s Rossoneri adventure: 13 minutes into the derby, he entered at 3-1 to try to reopen the match, and was a spectator two minutes later of the Nerazzurri poker. Due to his technical and physical characteristics, Pioli considers him the true deputy Giroud. However, without having had time to direct him according to the team’s needs: the Serbian arrived on the last day of the transfer market and left immediately afterwards to answer the call from the national team. In 2018-19 his best season: 17 goals with Eintracht Frankfurt in the Bundesliga. Then 2 in La Liga with Real and 6 with Fiorentina in Serie A. Which is why he wasn’t the club’s first choice, until a few hours after the end of the negotiations he was busy convincing Porto to sell the striker Taremi. One of the two could play in Cagliari: 50/50, or 0 to 0.