Matteo Gabbia has admitted that the manner of AC Milan’s Europa League exit to Roma is hard to take, but insists that they must bounce back in the last few games of the season.
Not only were Milan unable to overturn the first leg deficit after losing 1-0 at San Siro last week, but they arguably got even worse in the return game as they were beaten 2-1 on the night in the capital.
Gianluca Mancini scored again and Paulo Dybala then made it 3-0 on aggregate, but then Mehmet Celik’s red card looked like reopening the contest given Roma had to play for an hour a man down.
However, the goal just never came for Milan until the last five minutes when Gabbia headed in a cross, the only one of what felt like hundreds to actually go near its intended recipient.
The season is now virtually over with the only remaining trophy having vanished. Gabbia spoke to Milan TV after the game to try and reflect on a very tough night, with MilanNews relaying his comments.
How do you judge the game?
“My goal doesn’t count for anything. There is a lot of disappointment, we wanted to leave Rome with a different result. We need to roll up our sleeves and prepare as best we can from tomorrow with all the energy and strength for Monday’s match, which is very important.”
What didn’t work?
“We expected everything and had prepared in the best possible way. There is disappointment because we wanted to do something different. Kudos to them.”
Was there a lack of ruthlessness up front?
“We created, especially from the 30th minute onwards. That’s how it went today and it’s useless to say that we could have scored more goals. Now this one is over and we have to look to the next one.”
The next one is the derby…
“A fundamental match and we will do everything we can. We will put our heart on the pitch.”
He should not be the one showing up. Where is Calabria? Theo? Mike? Rafa? These are the leaders. These are the ones we want to hear. Cowards!
Matteo Gabbia is a leader now . Gabbia is undroppable after this !!!!!
What didn’t work?
Trying to go shoulder to shoulder with Lukaku would have been a good answer.
🫣
Gabbia was the only player that deserves a pass even though he was destroyed by Lukaku on the 2nd goal.
He was the only one that kept fighting and kept pushing even going forward throughout the whole game.
Kudos to Gabbia 👏👏
Agree he was definitely one of our best players. Just that one double error leading up to the Dybala goal.
Which also was an a grade shot.
Theo was also at fault for diving when he didn’t need to. Allowing Lukaku that easy cut back.
It’s incomprehensible that only one Milan player had a decent match yesterday (Gabbia). Everyone else played way under their levels. Underperformed massively. And what about Roma? DDR had tactics to win the game and pumped up the fighting spirit too. Both things missing in the Milan camp. And that is thanks to Pioli.
He was bullied because he was the only one guarding the backline on their counter attack. Tomori was way up higher and caught out of position all the time.
That is why I always say you need to have a commander at the back, a strong player with high positional awareness and not just bunch of fast paced ball playing defenders like Tomori and Thiaw. Two of them at the back and your backline will certainly be exposed out of position.
Gabbia is a captain material. Reminds me a lot of Ambrosini character wise.
I’d ask the question the other way around: Not what went wrong, but what went right ?