Milan face derby day of reckoning as Juve clash falls flat on shabby stage

It was supposed to be one of those Sunday night spectacles that define a Serie A season. Milan, second in the table and needing a win to keep pace in the title race, up against Juventus, fifth and fighting for their Champions League lives. Two of the giants of Italian football squaring off at San Siro, the country’s grandest arena.

Juventus were yet to beat any of the teams ahead of them in the table – Milan, Inter, Napoli or Atalanta. But their manager, Massimiliano Allegri, had never lost in 18 career meetings with his Rossonero counterpart Stefano Pioli. This was an occasion for someone to rewrite the narratives. Instead, all the pens ran dry.

There is barely a tale to recount about the football match itself. Juventus went the full 90 minutes without taking a shot on target. The last time that happened to them in a game against Milan was March 2011, with Alessandro Matri up front and Luigi Delneri in the dugout. They finished that season seventh.

Milan pushed harder, but still never looked much like scoring. Rafael Leão forced Wojciech Szczęsny to get down quickly when he dug out a shot between four defenders on the edge of the box. Olivier Giroud sent a header straight at the keeper from near the penalty spot. That was as close as either team came to breaking the goalless stalemate.

Perhaps things might have gone differently if Zlatan Ibrahimovic had not been forced off for Milan after 28 minutes with an achilles injury. It was he who laid the ball off to Leão for the first of those opportunities, redirecting a pass from Junior Messias into the path of their Portuguese teammate.

Even before the Swede’s exit, however, this felt like a diminished spectacle: a Broadway show with a cast full of understudies, performed on