Milan 0-3 Udinese: Serie A Match Report

Milan 0-3 Udinese, and the league leaders lost a home fixture they were expected to control without ever registering a goal. Results like this happen to title-chasing sides, but rarely by three at their own ground and rarely against a team from the middle of the table.

The half-time score was 0-2, and it shapes everything else about the afternoon: Udinese had the match won on the scoreboard before the interval. The second half went 0-1 the same way, so there was no phase of the game in which Milan closed the gap. A blank home scoresheet from the division's leading side is the more unusual half of the result.

Milan came in first on seventy-two points from thirty-one matches with a goal difference of +45, the best in Serie A. Udinese were eleventh on forty from the same number of games, goal difference -7. Thirty-two points separated them in the standings. On the day the gap in the table described two different seasons and nothing about the ninety minutes.

Milan stay on seventy-two and see their goal difference cut from +45 to +42 — still comfortably the best figure in the league, but three goals of the cushion that a title race can eventually be decided on are gone. More pointedly, a home fixture that was budgeted as three points returned none, and at thirty-one matches played there is limited road left to absorb that.

Udinese move to forty-three with their goal difference improving from -7 to -4, and the distance between the clubs narrows from thirty-two points to twenty-nine. Eleventh place with that points total is a season already safe from anything below and out of reach of anything above, which makes an away win at the leaders the sort of result that changes very little in the table and rather more in how the rest of the run-in is approached.

Our pre-match call was Over 2.5 Goals at 1.72. It was settled before the break: two goals inside the first half meant the market needed only one more across the remaining forty-five minutes, and the third arrived after it. The selection did not depend on our read of who would score, which was fortunate, since the goals came entirely from the side we would have expected to concede them. Backing volume rather than a winner at a ground where the home team scores freely turned out to be the right shape of bet even though the match itself went the wrong way round. Verdict: won