It was approaching midnight in Riyadh and after steering his new team to a dramatic win in his first game, Sergio Conceicao was feeling philosophical.
The adrenaline of AC Milan’s comeback victory over Juventus, delivered by USMNT stars Christian Pulisic and Yunus Musah, was still subsiding and the Portuguese head coach outlined the key quality that swung their comeback.
“In football and in life, you’ve got to be brave,” he told reporters in a post-match press conference.
Clearly, the game’s man of the match, Pulisic, had been listening. He displayed guts and self-belief to step up and take the penalty he had won on 70 minutes, smashing it into the top of the net. In the technical area, Conceicao pumped his fists and bellowed into the night air of the Saudi capital.
Musah, too, was willing to take a risk four minutes later when he sent in a speculative cross and was rewarded by Lady Luck. Juventus defender Federico Gatti deflected the ball past stranded goalkeeper Michele Di Gregorio and just like that, the Rossoneri had fought back from oblivion.
In the space of four minutes, the American pair might have saved their club’s season.
Christian Pulisic challenges his USMNT colleague Weston McKennie during Friday’s semi-final (Fadel Senna/AFP via Getty Images)
Whether they can do that definitively and deliver a trophy to ease the pain of being 17 points off the top of the Serie A table remains to be seen.
But the chance to score a morale-boosting win over city rivals Inter when the two teams meet back at Al-Awwal Park in the final of the Supercoppa Italiana (the Italian Super Cup) on Monday is a tantalising prospect.
Milan have won just once in their last seven meetings (Inter were victorious in the other six), but Milan hold immediate bragging rights after September’s 2-1 win in Serie A. That too was sparked by a Pulisic goal.
Pulisic’s return — he was back in the starting line-up on Friday after calf issues caused him to miss the last three league games — could not have come soon enough. The 26-year-old has become Milan’s talisman this season. He is their joint top scorer in the league with five goals and underlined his value emphatically against Juventus.
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This Supercoppa semi-final win was Conceicao’s first game in charge after he was appointed to replace Paulo Fonseca earlier this week.
The 51-year-old was dispensed with as Milan began to drift. The Serie A title looks beyond them and their Champions League campaign has waxed and waned.
Fonseca was sacked after a 1-1 draw at home against Roma, a stalemate that means the seven-time European champions are in eighth place in the table, 17 points behind leaders Napoli. Inter are 13 points ahead.
He was only appointed in June to replace Stefano Pioli, who signed Pulisic and Musah and helped them to a runners-up finish last season and their first league title in 11 years in 2022.
Yunus Musah is congratulated by his Milan team-mates for his role in their winning goal against Juventus (Yasser Bakhsh/Getty Images)
The Rossoneri are faring slightly better in Europe: they are 12th in the 36-team Champions League table, having lost two and won four of their six matches, but Monday offers a chance to supercharge belief around the club.
Musah acknowledged how hard work, that supposed common denominator for all successful teams, had got them to the final and why it must become their bedrock.
“As we saw in the second half, the squad has a great desire to play in a final and win a trophy,” he said after the win on Friday. “We’ve worked a lot. That’s the message: we’ve worked a lot and we don’t want to waste this opportunity
“We were also a little lucky. The luck came because of the right grit. We are united.
“Obviously, in the last few weeks, things haven’t gone amazingly well, but the present is now. We had this chance, we took it and made the most of it. Now we’re focused on trying to win the title on Monday.”
For his part, Milan’s coach was up-front on what he felt were his side’s first-half failings and his comments in the same press conference suggested he will demand more from his attackers, including Pulisic, who started on the right of attack, with Alvaro Morata as the centre-forward.
“The first half looked like the AC Milan from weeks ago,” said Conceicao. “It looked like we had doubts, we didn’t time our press in defence, too slow with the ball, didn’t get in behind enough.
“Up top, Alvaro was making support runs. We needed our wingers to get in behind, but we never did that. The midfield was a bit sluggish.
“We changed our attitude at the break. If you think about what you need to do but then don’t do it, it becomes difficult.”
Pulisic, as well as Musah, who came on as a second-half substitute to seal the turnaround, clearly heeded their new boss’s desires.
If they can have the same impact on Monday, when Milan’s rivalry with Inter, known as the Derby della Madonnina, is fought out in the Middle East, the cloud that has hung over the Rossoneri’s festive season will begin to lift.
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(Top photo: Marco Luzzani/Getty Images)
