Gabbia paves the way as Milan bank on Futuro players [Bonus Article]

Aside from the fact that Milan are capable of not only winning but also putting in a good performance under Paulo Fonseca, the derby win taught us a few things about the club’s future plans. In particular, the goal scored by Matteo Gabbia showed that there is value in the ‘forgotten’, and this is something that bodes well for the Milan Futuro project.

After six goals conceded in just three games, Fonseca finally decided to give Gabbia the chance alongside Fikayo Tomori against Venezia. The first clean sheet of the season arrived and the Italian played a big part, though seemingly not enough to start against Liverpool a few days later. He did, however, get the chance again in the derby and we all know what the outcome was.

The interesting thing here is that while many casual and neutral fans were surprised by Gabbia’s immense display in the big clash, the reaction of the Rossoneri faithful was almost the complete opposite. Of course, none of us dared to predict that he would score the winner of the game - let alone that Milan would win - but his defensive efforts were a repeat of what we saw last season.

Last season’s big hint

At the end of last season, I sat down and calculated the scores of every Milan player based on the player ratings we published on the site. We looked at the best average ratings as well as the highest and lowest ratings handed out during the season (does Malick Thiaw against Monza ring a bell?). In any case, Gabbia came out on top with the highest average rating at 6.24/10.

Player Ratings 'Big Data' Breakdown [Bonus Article]

Christian Pulisic, who was my player of the season all things considered, finished in fourth place (though just 0.06 behind Gabbia) and this showed that our methodology perhaps wasn’t flawless. Nevertheless, it’s hard to argue against the fact that Gabbia was our most consistent player in the second half of the season, putting in several fantastic and many good performances.

As such, it was quite surprising that Fonseca waited until the third game of the season before even giving Gabbia a single minute, especially when you consider that he was available for the entire pre-season. But if these ‘exclusions’ had something to do with Gabbia’s evident willingness in the derby, then we wouldn’t change it for the world, right?