Verona 0-1 Milan: Serie A Match Report

Verona 0-1 Milan was settled by the only goal of the first half and closed out by a goalless second. A one-goal away win, and for the visitors a considerably less convincing afternoon than the twenty-league-place gap between the clubs would suggest.

Milan came in third on 63 points from 32 matches with a goal difference of +20, three behind Napoli and fifteen behind Inter, and with a recent record that had gone badly wrong: 1-0 over Inter, then 0-1 at Lazio, 3-2 against Torino, 0-1 at Napoli, 0-3 at home to Udinese. Three defeats in four, two of them without scoring, and the last a three-goal home loss to a mid-table side. The win over Inter was the outlier rather than the trend.

Verona were 19th on 18 with -32, nine points from safety and beaten in four consecutive matches: 0-2 at home to Genoa, 0-1 at Atalanta, 0-1 at home to Fiorentina, 1-2 at Torino. Their previous win had been 2-1 at Bologna. Milan had taken the reverse fixture 3-0 in December.

Milan reached 66 points and a goal difference of +21, drawing level with Napoli and cutting Inter's lead to twelve with five rounds to play. For a side who had just lost 0-3 at home, the value was in stopping the run rather than in the manner: one goal against the second-bottom club is not the performance of a title challenger, but three points is three points and the table does not record how they arrived.

Verona stayed on 18 with the difference sliding to -33. A fifth consecutive defeat, and a scoring record that had now produced one goal in five matches. Nine points from 17th with five rounds and fifteen points available, they were relying on a sequence of wins from a team that had stopped scoring. That is the point at which a relegation becomes a matter of when.

Our pre-match call was Milan Win at 1.85. It came in, and 1.85 was a generous price on a third-placed side away at the team lying 19th — the market was pricing Milan's three defeats in four rather than the gap between the clubs. That was the correct thing for the market to do and the wrong conclusion to reach. Verona had scored once in four matches; a side that cannot score cannot punish a struggling favourite. Backing the better team against an opponent with no attack is the simplest edge available, and it needed only one goal to work. Verdict: won