The last time Stefan Pioli’s players lost was almost eight months ago, on March 8, when they lost 1: 2 to Genoa. Since then, they have not lost a single defeat in the next 24 matches, and are currently in the first place in the Serie A table. The match against Lille was a sharp awakening from a beautiful dream, and the players of AC Milan will not be able to explain what happened at San Siro for a long time. Fans of this team can be glad that the match did not end with a bigger defeat, because after the loss of the third goal in the 58th minute, their team completely stood still, and the players were so shocked that they did not even try to make an even fight. The visitors in the second half had a few good opportunities to increase the match result.
It is worth adding that Bartosz Frankowski was the referee for the fourth time in his career. In the first half, the Polish referee took a penalty for Alessio Romagnoli’s foul on Yusuf Yazici. This decision aroused a lot of controversy, but had little impact on the result of the match, because the French team was clearly better that day and deprived the Italians of any hope of victory right after the break.
Ultimately, AC Milan’s executioner turned out to be 23-year-old Yusuf Yazici, who is slowly becoming one of the more serious candidates to be the top scorer of this year’s Europa League. In three games of this year’s edition, the Turk managed to score as many as six goals, and the EUR 13 million paid a year ago by the authorities of Lille to Trabzonspor can be recouped quite quickly. The French team with seven points is currently the leader of Group H.
There were also goals in the second game of Group H, in which Celtic lost 1: 4 with Sparta Prague. Interestingly, the hosts played the game for most of the match. However, not much resulted from the possession of the ball and the exchange of passes (over 500 throughout the game), because the Scots could only make four shots. The visitors’ striker Lukas Julis, who showed a hat-trick, was much more effective than the entire Celtic team. Such a high victory for Sparta Prague is quite a surprise, because so far the Czech team did not do very well in the Europa League, and the group competition started with two defeats, in which they lost as many as seven goals.
AC Milan – LOSC Lille 0: 3 (0: 1)
Goals: Yazici (21, 55, 58)
Celtic FC – Sparta Praga 1:4 (0:1)
Goals: Griffiths (65) – Julis (26, 45, 76)
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