Liverpool beat 2-0 on Saturday night AC Milan in Charlotte in front of a Liverpool strong crowd. The venue was the Carolina Panthers Bank of America Stadium and Liverpool’s opponents were their famous European rivals AC Milan. In what was overall an impressive display from the Reds they won 2-0 wit goals from Joe Allen and Suso either side of half time.
The game began like most games this Liverpool pre-season with the Reds on top and pressing the opposition. Also like most pre-season games, chances were few and far between, still adjusting to life without Luis Suarez.
Despite these teething problems, Liverpool’s pressing created the first real chance of the game; Joe Allen pressed Sulley Muntari who had received a square ball, who failed to react quickly and lost out to the diminutive midfielder who ran through on goal one on one, but hit the bost. Despite such profligacy, the chance fell to Raheem Sterling who saw his shot saved, which then fell to Joe Allen who volleyed into the net from close range to put the Reds 1-0 up after 17 minutes.
Unsurprisingly, following the goal the Reds seemed to looked more fluid in attack and eventually the pressure paid off when the Reds were awarded a penalty not a slight foul on Raheem Sterling. New-boy Rickie Lambert stood up to take the penalty – the same Lambert who never missed a penalty for the Saints – and missed! The penalty was a turgid effort and easily saved by Abbiati.
Some minutes after the penalty save both sides took a mystifying water break – it was only 20 degrees Celsius. The rest of the first half saw little chances for either half, with Milan looking embarrassingly weak vs. a generally second string Liverpool.
The big change at half time was Balotelli coming on for Milan while Suso and Coady came on for Liverpool, certainly hoping to impress Rodgers and his staff. Milan started well and Liverpool generally struggled to impose their fluency, tempo and control of the game like they did in the first half. On 60 minutes Rodgers had seen enough and made a raft of changes. On came Sakho, Toure, Johnson, Enrique, Gerrard, Coutinho, Peterson and Emre Can.
Following the changes little actually changed in terms of rhythm and tempo for quite a while, and until the last ten minutes of the game it seemed an exercise in tedium as much as anything for both players and spectators. Eventually the game found some life and the Reds began passing in those intelligent triangles we often seen last year. Eventually the Reds found one final chance on 89 minutes when Countinho dummied a square ball across the Milan box which fell to Suso who struck the ball well into the Milan net with an impressive swerve.
Overall the game wasn’t as exciting as Liverpool’s last vs. Manchester City but the players who started the game must take much blame for that. Liverpool made a total of 11 changes in the game and many key facets of their game did remain – with that Brendan Rodgers can take great heart going into the final of the International Champions Cup on Monday night vs. Manchester United.
