Milan vs Liverpool Prediction: Champions League Match Preview

Arne Slot takes charge of his first UEFA Champions League match as Liverpool boss when his side travel to Milan. Liverpool are favourites to win with the Opta supercomputer, but how much will their defeat against Nottingham Forest affect them?

Milan vs Liverpool Stats: The Quick Hits

• Liverpool are the favourites to win their opening UEFA Champions League match, beating Milan in 48.2% of pre-match simulations by the Opta supercomputer.
• Liverpool have won four of their last five away games against Italian sides in European competition (L1), with all five of those coming since 2020.
• Milan are unbeaten in their last four games against English sides in the Champions League (W2 D2),

Match Preview

Liverpool meet Milan in their first Champions League game of the season, in what will be Arne Slot’s first match in charge of the Reds in Europe.

The two sides had contrasting fortunes at the weekend. Liverpool’s superb start to the season was brought to an abrupt and surprising halt at home to Nottingham Forest. The heavy pre-game favourites, Liverpool were expected to continue their winning start to life under new manager Slot.

But Forest had other ideas and secured a first away top-flight win against Liverpool since February 1969, ending their 25-game winless run at Anfield in league competition.

Milan finally kickstarted their season with a resounding 4-0 win over promoted Venezia. Four goals in the first 30 minutes helped ease the pressure on Paulo Fonseca, who earned his first win as Milan boss at the fourth time of asking.

Slot will now turn his attention to Europe, where Liverpool return to the Champions League after a year in the Europa League. They reached the quarter-finals in that competition last season before being eliminated by eventual winners Atalanta.

Slot was managing Feyenoord, of course, in the 2023–24 season. The Dutch side qualified for the Champions League group stage, but Slot could only guide them to a third-place finish in Group E after losing all three away games against Atlético Madrid, Lazio, and Celtic.

Despite having one of the most difficult set of fixtures, Liverpool will be confident of getting a result here. They have won four of their last five away games against Italian sides in European competition (L1), with all five of those coming since 2020. They also did the double over Milan in the 2021-22 UCL group stage.

Mohamed Salah has started the Premier League season on fire and thrives in Europe, too. His 41 Champions League goals for Liverpool is the highest tally any player has recorded for an English club.

Milan are unbeaten in their last four games against English sides in the Champions League (W2 D2), with each of those coming across the previous two seasons (against Spurs and Newcastle). They’ve never previously managed to avoid defeat in five consecutive games against English opponents in the European Cup/Champions League.

In team news, Ismaël Bennacer, Alessandro Florenzi and Marco Sportiello are long-term absences for Milan, while Malick Thiaw is out until the end of the month with an ankle injury.

Liverpool got through their game at the weekend unscathed. Harvey Elliott is the only member of the squad out through injury, although Federico Chiesa is still lacking match fitness.

Milan vs Liverpool Head-to-Head

This will be the fifth meeting between Milan and Liverpool in European competition, with half of their previous clashes coming in the UEFA Champions League final (2/4) – 2004-05 (won by Liverpool on penalties) and 2006-07 (won 2-1 by Milan).

Liverpool have won all three of their Champions League games at the Giuseppe Meazza stadium, winning 1-0 in 2008 and 2-0 in 2022 against Inter, and 2-1 against Milan in 2021. The Reds are the only team to play there more than once as a visiting side in the competition while maintaining a 100% record.

Recent Form

Despite their win at the weekend, Milan have not yet convinced under Fonseca. They’ve won just one of their opening four matches in Serie A and sit four points behind leaders Napoli. They’ve not really had any issues creating good opportunities; they lead all teams in Serie A for touches in the opposition box (133), while only Atalanta (7.9) have generated a higher expected goals tally than them (7.6).

It’s at the back where they’ve been susceptible though, and have consistently been conceding high-value chances to their opposition. Milan’s 0.17 xG faced per shot is the highest in the league. Unsurprisingly, their opponents’ 20.7% shot conversion rate is also the highest mark in the league. So while they’re not conceding shots at a frequent rate, when they do get cut open, their opponents are getting excellent chances on goal.

Liverpool will hope their hiccup to Forest was only a blip. After all, they’ve won three of Slot’s first four games, and Callum Hudson-Odoi’s strike at the weekend was the first goal they have conceded all season.

Opta Power Rankings

The Opta Power Rankings are a global team ranking system that assigns an ability score to over 13,000 domestic football teams on a scale between zero and 100, where zero is the worst-ranked team in the world and 100 is the best team in the world.

Ahead of kick-off, here is the Opta Power Ranking for both sides.

Milan vs Liverpool Prediction

The Opta supercomputer predicts Liverpool to bounce back with a win in this encounter. The Reds won in 48.2% of 10,000 pre-match simulations. Milan got the victory in 27.5% of those data-led sims, while the draw occurred in 24.3%.

Overall in Opta’s tournament predictions, Liverpool’s chances of winning the whole thing sit at 4.2%. They are the model’s seventh-ranked team in that regard.

Milan are big outsiders with a 0.4% probability of their first Champions League success in 17 years.

Milan vs Liverpool UCL Squads

Milan: Mike Maignan, Marco Sportiello, Davide Calabria, Theo Hernández, Emerson Royal, Fikayo Tomori, Alessandro Florenzi, Malick Thiaw, Strahinja Pavlovic, Matteo Gabbia, Ismaël Bennacer, Ruben Loftus-Cheek, Christian Pulisic, Tijjani Reijnders, Youssouf Fofana, Filippo Terracciano, Yunus Musah, Álvaro Morata, Luka Jovic, Rafael Leão, Noah Okafor, Samuel Chukwueze, Tammy Abraham.

Head Coach: Paulo Fonseca

Liverpool: Alisson Becker, Caoimhín Kelleher, Joe Gomez, Virgil van Dijk, Ibrahima Konaté, Kostas Tsimikas, Andrew Robertson, Trent Alexander-Arnold, Jarell Quansah, Conor Bradley, Wataru Endo, Dominik Szoboszlai, Alexis Mac Allister, Curtis Jones, Harvey Elliott, Ryan Gravenberch, Luis Díaz, Darwin Núñez, Mohamed Salah, Federico Chiesa, Cody Gakpo, Diogo Jota.

Head Coach: Arne Slot

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