Ranking all 12 players to wear the No.9 shirt for AC Milan since 2000

Twelve players have worn the shirt since 2000. In many ways, it has been a poisoned chalice, with only one player wearing it for more than a single season but Giroud is making a pretty good fist of things in Milan.

But is he the best wearer of the number nine shirt? We’ve ranked all 12 players from worst to best.

Having been deemed surplus to requirements by Milan in 2007, Matri returned to his boyhood club in an €11million deal six years later following spells at Cagliari and Juventus.

He scored once in 18 appearances in all competitions before being sent out on a series of loan moves. Weirdly, that included a brief spell back at Juve, in which he scored an extra-time winner in the 2015 Coppa Italia final. Italian football is strange.

After struggling at Chelsea, El Nino joined Milan on a two-year loan in 2014 but failed to rediscover his best form at the San Siro.

The former Spain international managed one goal in seven Serie A starts before heading back to boyhood club Atletico Madrid in January 2015.

“The situation was so – I went with an expectation and with an idea which, later, was not met,” Torres told AS in 2015.

“I went to Italy to play, to be an important player, and at no point did I feel like it. I was in and out of the team, I played on one day, yes, and on another, no. This is not what I had spoken of from the beginning.

“My dealings with the club were excellent and I don’t have anything to reproach. But when you see it’s not going to get better, nor change the situation you have, you are uncomfortable.”

READ: A tribute to Liverpool-era Fernando Torres, a striker who could do it all

Despite being linked with moves to Arsenal, Tottenham and Chelsea, Destro decided to join Milan on a six-month loan deal in