Milan, this is the best Leao: with 86 balls touched

Eighty-six balls touched. We can start from here to talk about Rafael Leao’s evening. For an attacker, even a winger, they are an enormity. To clarify: the last time he played ninety minutes, against Napoli, there were 47. Let’s start from this figure – which is also his season record – because it tells how much Rafa was involved in the match, but this time the discussion needs to be broadened immediately. That is, how much Leao is inside this Milan. Whether tonight’s match will be the watershed between the old and the new Rafa will be told in the next few weeks, but two things are absolutely certain. One: this is one of his best matches since he wore the Rossoneri. Two: here we are not talking about performance as an end in itself, however luxurious, but about an overall attitude. In summary: Leao was the undisputed leader of Milan this time. He took him by the hand with his blows and pushed him into his soul with his approach. The team drew energy from him. He pushed his teammates, called upon the crowd to push him with big gestures, shot four times, crossed eight, won eleven duels (out of sixteen).

cult of beauty

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This is exactly what Pioli and the Rossoneri world ask of him. Becoming a total player, in managing your legs and head. Because then goals like these are a paradoxically relative matter: everyone knows that he has them in his heart. If Leao scores, it is much more likely that they will be beautiful goals, sometimes magnificent. It happens to visionary footballers with the cult of a beauty that can sometimes also be a limit. The dark face of the moon is the heel with Newcastle but this time the light is blindingly beautiful. Furthermore, he used his heel again tonight. To stop a long throw that came from the opposite side of the pitch, and then to escape Ruggeri’s control. In the championship she hadn’t thrown it in for five months. It was September 23rd against Verona. Then, of course, he had thought about it in the cups: one in the Champions League, two in the Europa League, two in the Italian Cup. Rafa is the only player in our league to have scored in four different competitions, with this goal he reached 50 in the five main European championships and equaled Rui Costa in second place among the best Portuguese scorers in Serie A (at the top is obviously Ronaldo, with 81).

badness

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However, more than an evening of numbers, this is an evening of growth. In search of that continuity and that overall maturity that has always gone in fits and starts and so far has kept him out of the door of the club of top players. Those who entertain the idea of ​​winning the Ballon d’Or, something which in reality he has already said he is thinking about. Rightly so, because ambitions must have no boundaries when you are 24 years old and as talented as him. To those who, before the match, asked him why Rafa in front of goal sometimes isn’t bad enough, Pioli responded like this: “It’s something he has to look for in himself, but he’s doing it.” Leao has found that something this time and now the real work is not to let it slip away from his hands. And let’s not talk about goals, wonderful as they are. But of all that Rafa showed tonight. Just one note, which we have already made to him other times in similar situations, because he is a repeat offender: a goal like that does not deserve a polemical celebration, but a sincere celebration without resentment.