Louise Taylor was at San Siro tonight, and her verdict is in. Here it is! Thanks for reading this MBM. Nighty night.
That’s a fine and satisfying result for Newcastle, who go to their fans and return the support they’ve enjoyed all night. Everyone clapping, everyone happy. Not so Milan, who had the majority of the chances, but never seriously looked like tucking one away. Indeed the Toon could easily have nicked it at the end. It would have been a classic smash and grab after a staunch defensive display. That Rafael Leão backheel, though. My oh my.
| Pos | Team | P | GD | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | AC Milan | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2 | Newcastle | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 3 | Borussia Dortmund | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 4 | PSG | 0 | 0 | 0 |
FULL TIME: AC Milan 0-0 Newcastle United
The corner is sent in. Sportiello fingertips out for another corner, one which will never be taken, as the whistle blows. Newcastle claim a hard-fought point on their return to the Champions League!
90 min +5: A huge chance for Newacstle right at the end! Almiron drives infield from the right, the Milan defence on the back foot. He finds Anderson to his left. Anderson tees up Longstaff on the edge of the D. Longstaff takes a shy at goal, forcing Sportiello to tip over. One last corner!
90 min +3: Musah threatens to tear clear down the right but is stopped unceremoniously in his tracks by Trippier’s sliding tackle. That’s a stunning intervention at such a late stage. Newcastle want this point all right!
90 min +2: The amount of additional time seems to have been downgraded to five, which will be more music to Newcastle’s ears.
90 min +1: A long throw from the right flank forces a Milan corner. Pulisic takes long. Over everyone’s head. Newcastle push out. “Memories!” trills Charles Antaki. “When Milan were wonderful (not recently), Newcastle were dire (quite recently) and look, is that really Olivier Giroud still playing? Good for him.”
90 min: Harvey Barnes comes on for Isak. There will be six additional minutes. Can the Toon hang on?
89 min: Krunic is booked for losing the rag.
88 min: Or could they grab all three? Almiron romps down the middle on the counter, and should slip Longstaff clear on the overlap on the right … but his pass pushes his team-mate too far wide, forcing Longstaff to cross rather than shoot. The ball squirts to Sportiello who launches a counter of Milan’s own. Giroud pearls a long shot towards the top left, but Pope claims. Breathless basketball stuff!
87 min: Hernandez dribbles down the left channel but is blocked by Anderson. Florenzi crosses from the right but it’s easy for Pope. Pulisic attempts a curler only for Anderson to get in the road again. Newcastle are scrapping hard to keep hold of a precious point.
85 min: Pulisic can’t beat Burn down the right and the ball clanks off his shin. Goal kick. He waves his arms around in disgust, wanting a corner. The home crowd whistle in impotent irritation. Milan’s frustration is betraying them.
83 min: Musah works some space down the right but his cross is cleared easily enough. Giroud competes for the loose ball, jumping into Longstaff. It’s a garden-variety foul, but Giroud argues the toss with the referee a bit too energetically, and is booked for his lip.
82 min: Musah is booked for a cynical barge into the back of an in-flight Bruno Guimaraes. The free kick’s launched long into the Milan box by Trippier, but Burn can’t get on the end of it. Goal kick.
81 min: Maignan pops back up, but only with a view to limping off the pitch. Marco Sportiello comes on to replace him.
79 min: Maignan goes down having pulled something while kicking long. Looks like the Milan keeper won’t be able to see out the match. On comes the physio.
78 min: Florenzi has been dangerous since coming on, and sends in another cross from the right. At the far stick, Leao leaves it to Hernandez, who shins out high and wide for a goal kick.
77 min: Almiron attempts to counter down the right flank. He nearly gets clear, too, but Tomori isn’t in the mood to give an inch as the pair tussle, and eventually overpowers his man. Both teams appear to have suddenly decided that a winner would be so very precious in this group of death.
76 min: The corner’s pulled back to Hernandez, who creams a low shot that’s blocked and cleared. Milan taking it up a notch here.
75 min: Musah jinks his way past Anderson down the right. The ball’s worked towards Leao, steaming in from the other flank. Almiron does extremely well to get back, stretch out a leg, and divert the ball out for a corner.
74 min: Florenzi picks up the pace, storming down the right and whipping a cross towards Leao, who flicks a cute header towards the top left from 12 yards. Inches over the bar. That would have been a fine goal.
72 min: Elliot Anderson comes on for erstwhile Milan star Sandro Tonali, who departs to a warm ovation from his old fans.
71 min: Looks like Loftus-Cheek twisted his ankle upon crossing. He’s replaced by the USA international Yunus Musah.
70 min: Loftus-Cheek works his way down the right and crosses low. Another easy job for Pope. Loftus-Cheek goes down, holding his leg. It doesn’t look as though he’s able to continue.
68 min: Hernandez floats an aimless ball into the Newcastle box from the left. Nowhere in red and black near it. Pope gathers the waft as the denizens of San Siro sigh. Newcastle will be very happy with the way this second half is going. Pope’s not been pressed into action since the break at all.
66 min: Wilson’s first contribution is the hassling of Thiaw down the Newcastle right. He forces the Milan defender into clanking clumsily out of play for a throw, deep in his own territory. No long throw from Trippier, though, which is something of a disappointment, and the Milan box remains unthreatened.
64 min: Reijnders twinkles his toes to make a little bit of space on the edge of the Newcastle box. He attempts to shape a shot into the bottom right, but doesn’t get enough power or curl on the effort and it’s an easy snaffle for Pope, who hasn’t had much to do since the restart.
63 min: Newcastle respond with a double change of their own. Callum Wilson and Miguel Almirón replace Jacob Murphy and Anthony Gordon.
62 min: Pulisic’s first act is to send a hopeless cross in from the right. He has the good grace to look sheepish.
61 min: A double change by Milan. Christian Pulišić and Tijjani Reijnders replace Samu Chukwueze and Tommaso Pobega.
59 min: A slight lull, so here’s Edward Ricketts with his Fact of the Match. “The word for ‘Magpie’ in Italian is ‘una gazza’. Seems very fitting.”
57 min: Botman heads the free kick half-clear, then Tonali completes the job.
56 min: Chukwueze jinks down the right and draws a foul from Tonali, who is fortunate not to go into the book for the cynical tug back. Nothing comes from the resulting free kick, but Guimaraes soon grapples Hernandez to the floor out on the other flank and Milan will get a second go at bothering Newcastle from a set piece.
54 min: Trippier holds no grudges and finds Murphy down the right. Murphy slings in a fine cross, hoping to find Isak, but Maignan comes off his line decisively and punches clear with confidence. Fine play all round.
52 min: Florenzi drifts in from the right and scampers upfield. He’s got Hernandez in space to his side, but like Murphy before him, decides to take on the shot himself instead. He dribbles weakly wide right of the Newcastle goal, then receives an educational salvo from his team-mate.
51 min: Gordon releases Murphy down the inside-right channel. He’s got Trippier in acres on the overlap, but opts instead to blaze wildly over the bar. Trippier gives him the what-for. “Did you know that Leão is also a rapper and releases his music under the name WAY 45?” asks Justin Kavanagh, setting himself up for a zinger. “The left-winger will be lucky not to be well on his WAY to a P45 if he carries on with that nonsense.”
(For the benefit of older readers, rap is a genre where people talk over the music.)
49 min: Schar is booked for elbowing Pobega on the back of the head while challenging for a high ball. Having won the header, he looks perplexed.
47 min: Gordon battles to win possession on the edge of the Milan box. He lays off to Tonali, who attempts a curler into the top right. Blocked, but a decent effort nonetheless.
Milan get the second half underway. They’ve made a change at right back, captain Davide Calabria, on a booking, making way for Alessandro Florenzi. “I hope the Milan fans will forgive Leão the sin of showboating at the wrong time. If it’s any consolation to the Portuguese international, the Pope has absolved him wholeheartedly. (The Newcastle goalie version, anyway. Not sure about the Vatican one.)” Peter Oh, ladies and gentlemen. He’s here all week. Try the bread and wine.
… and here it is, your half-time entertainment. Enjoy, enjoy.
Rafael Leao likes playing too much , he should have scored this against Newcastle United sigh 😌
— Rowland🤍 (@Ghana_Ronaldo) September 19, 2023
pic.twitter.com/NXuPOq6V38
HALF TIME: AC Milan 0-0 Newcastle United
After three seconds of added time, the referee blows his whistle. Newcastle will be happy with their staunch efforts. Milan will be frustrated not to be leading, because they certainly should be: you’ll enjoy Rafael Leao’s elegant dribble and Keystone-Studios-influenced backheel when you see it.
Updated
45 min: Chukwueze dribbles hard down the right but Gordon doesn’t give an inch.
44 min: Milan knock it about to little effect. The home supporters continue to betray a light restlessness.
42 min: A few whistles from the San Siro faithful. It’ll be sweet music to Eddie Howe’s lugs.
40 min: Calabria gets right up in the referee’s grille when the referee refuses to award his team a free kick, and goes into the book for his trouble. No home-captain’s privileges here.
38 min: To be fair to Leao, he doesn’t let his head drop in the wake of that prime eejitry. In fact he uses it to guide the ball across the face of goal, left to right, in an attempt to tee up Giroud at the far stick. Giroud prepares to force home from close range, only to be legally bumped out of harm’s way by Botman.
36 min: Milan should be leading. What a fiasco. What on earth was Leao thinking about? Utterly preposterous. It wasn’t quite in the Mario Balotelli league, but it wasn’t far off.
Updated
34 min: Trippier sends a free kick into the Milan box from the left. Maignan punches clear powerfully. Milan counter through Leao, who dribbles elegantly into space from the left. He enters the box, sits Longstaff down, and makes space to shoot from six yards. He’ll surely score … but with only Pope to beat, attempts a ludicrous backheel instead, and trips over his own feet. What daft nonsense! Dear me. Pobega tries to salvage the situation with a low drive, but Murphy hacks off the line.
Updated
32 min: Milan nearly double Newcastle’s irritation by breaking straight upfield, Hernandez crossing low from the left, Giroud nearly flicking home at the near post. Inches wide. Goal kick. So close to the opening goal.
31 min: Murphy finds some space down the right and cuts back for Longstaff, who powers down the channel and into the box. Longstaff should take a shot, but feels a light shove in the small of his back and goes over, looking for the penalty. He’s not getting one. It would have been so soft. Why didn’t he shoot? He should have shot, you know.
30 min: A free kick for Toon wide left. They line up in front of the Milan box, waiting for a long into-the-mixer delivery that never comes. The ball’s played short to Tonali, who doesn’t do anything with it.
29 min: Trippier goes down clutching his ankle, having been caught late but not particularly cynically by Giroud. Thankfully he springs back up quickly, then has a quick moan to the ref, who isn’t interested in a word he says.
Updated
27 min: Milan probe. Newcastle hold their shape. Leao drops a shoulder, but Gordon doesn’t fall for the dummy. The visitors grinding well at the moment.
25 min: It’s a battle of the number 23s out on the Newcastle right. This time, Murphy tries to curl in a low cross only to be denied by the sliding Tomori.
24 min: Leao threatens to burst into space down the left only to be strangely stopped in his tracks by his own man Pobega, who takes the ball off him and extracts all momentum from the attack. Pobega pointlessly turns tail, and that is that.
22 min: Gordon tries to release Isak down the left but Tomori is wise to the plan and intercepts. Unlike his opposite number, Maignan has had nothing to do in the Milan goal.
20 min: Milan are on top now. Loftus-Cheek strides purposefully down the middle of the park and rasps a long-distance effort inches over the bar.
19 min: Krunic sends the corner into the mixer. Hernandez meets it six yards out, only to send his powerful header straight at Pope. Nothing comes from the resulting corner.
18 min: Milan take the sting out of the game with some patient passing … then suddenly burst forward. Chukwueze dribbles down the right but can’t find Leao with his cross. The ball flies back to Krunic, who sends a rising shot goalwards from 25 yards. Pope palms over for a corner, from which …
16 min: Murphy hassles Hernandez down the right. Then Tonali bothers Calabria again on the left. His cutback goes to nobody in particular. Newcastle look lively enough whenever they get forward.
14 min: … and now Pope makes it three stops in short order as Giroud spins on the right-hand corner of the six-yard box and attempts to force home. The resulting corner finds Leao on the other side of the six-yard box; he leans back and can’t get a meaningful shot away. Milan have suddenly snapped into life, and how!
Updated
13 min: Pobega sends a heatseeker towards the bottom-left corner of the Newcastle goal. Pope saves. Leao latches onto the rebound out on the left. He crosses long for Chukwueze, who heads powerfully downwards. Pope shovels away. A wonderful double save!
11 min: A Newcastle attack breaks down. Milan attempt to counter, and Longstaff brings an in-flight Hernandez down. He’s extremely fortunate not to go into the book.
9 min: Giroud slips Chukwueze into space down the right. The winger goes too early and up pops the offside flag. On the touchline, an irritated Stefano Pioli flings his arms around in the traditional Italian fashion.
8 min: Newcastle have settled well. Schar launches long down the right for Murphy, who tussles with Hernandez and only just fails to burst clear into the box. He claims he’s had his shirt tugged, and he may have a point, but play goes on.
6 min: … but Newcastle come again, through Milan old boy Tonali, who glides down the left and beats Calabria, only to run the ball out for a goal kick. A couple of lively moments that will give the visitors encouragement.
Updated
5 min: Murphy bustles down the middle to set Newcastle on the attack. Gordon finds Trippier out on the right. Trippier swings in, looking for Isak. Tomori heads clear.
4 min: Leao cuts in from the left and hits the first shot in anger. Straight at Pope and easy for the keeper.
3 min: Loftus-Cheek probes down the right and wins a throw deep in Newcastle territory. Baby steps for Milan after that 5-1 humiliation at the hands of Inter.
2 min: Milan spend the opening moments stroking it around the back in the our-house-our-rules style.
Newcastle get the ball rolling. “G’Day Scott, hope you’re well!” begins a cheery Chris Paraskevas. “A couple of years if you’d have told me Jacob Murphy would be starting at the San Siro in a Champions League match, I would have asked you what edition of Football Manager you were playing. After a lifetime of waking up at unnatural hours to watch us tumble out of the League Cup, it’s amazing to a̶̶̶c̶̶̶t̶̶̶u̶̶̶a̶̶̶l̶̶̶l̶̶̶y̶̶̶ ̶b̶̶̶e̶̶̶ ̶a̶̶̶t̶̶̶ ̶t̶̶̶h̶̶̶e̶̶̶ ̶S̶̶̶a̶̶̶n̶̶̶ ̶S̶̶̶i̶̶̶r̶̶̶o̶̶̶ have the privilege of waking up at 2am on a Wednesday for a European ‘night’. What a time to be alive.”
A moment of silence in memory of those who lost their lives in the recent tragedies in Morocco and Libya. “We are together with you,” reads a Uefa banner.
The teams are out! AC Milan aren’t called the rossoneri for nowt, while Newcastle sport their equally famous black and white stripes. We’ll be off after the handshakes and a quick blast of the Uefa-sanctioned 12-inch remix of Zadok the Priest. In the meantime, Joe Pearson wonders just how wise it was for Eddie Howe to reference “the lads with experience ... like Loris Karius?”
Updated
Eddie Howe speaks to TNT Sport. “We’re looking forward to it … it’s loud in the stadium already and it’s not even half full, so we know it’s going to be a great challenge and hopefully one we can rise to … the lads with experience will be vital for us … when you work hard to achieve this, we don’t want to waste it … enjoyment for us will come with us playing at our best … our supporters deserve this and we want to do them proud.”
It’s been a while, but Newcastle have done this sort of thing before. Here’s some pictorial evidence of the Toon cavorting on the European stage, including a lightning-in-a-bottle snapshot of Scott Parker’s sheer glee at becoming a winner of the 2006 Intertoto Cup.
Milan make three changes in the wake of their 5-1 Serie A stuffing by Internazionale. Samu Chukwueze, Fikayo Tomori and Tommaso Pobega take the places of Tijjani Reijnders, Simon Kjær and Christian Pulišić, who all drop to the bench.
Newcastle also make three changes to their starting line-up, after their garden-variety 1-0 win over Brentford. Sandro Tonali, Jacob Murphy and Alexander Isak step up, while Callum Wilson, Elliot Anderson and Harvey Barnes sit down. Tonali is making what we are contractually obliged to describe as “a dream return to his former club”.
Updated
The teams
AC Milan: Maignan, Calabria, Thiaw, Tomori, Hernandez, Loftus-Cheek, Krunic, Pobega, Chukwueze, Giroud, Leao.
Subs: Adli, Pulisic, Reijnders, Jovic, Okafor, Kjaer, Florenzi, Sportiello, Musah, Mirante, Bartesaghi.
Newcastle United: Pope, Trippier, Schar, Botman, Burn, Longstaff, Bruno Guimaraes, Tonali, Murphy, Isak, Gordon.
Subs: Dummett, Lascelles, Wilson, Targett, Barnes, Karius, Hall, Livramento, Almiron, Anderson, Miley, Harris.
Referee: Jose Maria Sanchez (Spain).
Preamble
Newcastle United took to European football immediately. Having qualified for the 1968-69 edition of the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup by finishing tenth in the old First Division (don’t ask), they seized the opportunity expertly, beating Feyenoord, Sporting Lisbon, Real Zaragoza, Vitoria de Setubal, Rangers and Ujpest to lift continental silverware at the first time of asking. Not bad going, especially considering Feyenoord would win the European Cup the following season. Hats off to Bobby Moncur, Frank Clark, Pop Robson et al!
Today’s lads could do with hitting the ground similarly well. This is Newcastle’s first jaunt in the Champions League for 20 years, and they’re in a group with the French champions Paris Saint-Germain, Bundesliga bridesmaids Borussia Dortmund and last year’s semi-finalists, the seven-time winners Milan. First stop, the San Siro. No biggie, then. “It is a game of football and I think that’s just how we have to approach it,” says Eddie Howe, who will no doubt point his players in the direction of Milan’s 5-1 weekend capitulation at arch-rivals Inter, rather than their 4-1 victory over Torino in their only match so far at San Siro this season. Which Milan will turn up? The Toon will hope it’s the former, and we’ll start finding out at 5.45pm BST. It’s on!
