How Chelsea cast-off Ruben Loftus-Cheek helped AC Milan destroy PSG
The frenzied nature of the UEFA Champions League’s simultaneous action has the ability to create a bit of a footballing blur, where so many things happen, and so many storylines unravel, that it’s hard to focus on just one.
Occasionally, though, someone delivers a performance so overwhelmingly good, it acts as magnetic, superseding everything else on the night. On Tuesday that happened as AC Milan beat Paris Saint-Germain in a thrilling game, where one player in particular stole the show.
Not Kylian Mbappé. Not Rafael Leao. And definitely not the hapless Ousmane Dembele.
It was Ruben Loftus-Cheek.
On a pitch that housed some of the world’s biggest superstars, including possibly the best player in the world and probably the best 17-year-old in the world, it was a Chelsea cast-off that made the biggest splash, powering up and down in midfield in a frankly other-worldly fashion at times.
He completed a whopping five dribbles, keeping pace with the electric Leao in those stakes. The locations of these dribbles is just as important as the number, with four of them coming from just outside his own box, brilliantly illustrating the way he drove Milan forward, switching them from defence to attack in an instant.
Perhaps he’d have completed even more—had he not been fouled three times, more than anyone else on the pitch. There was a particular moment where Warren Zaire-Emery tried to jockey him for the ball but bounced off, then tried in vain to chase him down but just couldn’t keep up. It was a remarkable role-reversal of a scene on Matchday 3, when Milan went to Paris, and Zaire-Emery left Loftus-Cheek’s midfield partner Tijjani Reijnders in his wake as he powered through midfield.
Loftus-Cheek missed that game due to injury. Could things have been different, had he played?
Perhaps not, as a lot went wrong for Milan that night and the presence of one player likely doesn’t stabilise things, but throughout this season it’s been clear that RLC’s impact on this Milan side can be game-changing. Reijnders and Yunus Musah are no slouches for midfield partners, but no one—other than Leao himself, perhaps—can match the raw dynamism of Milan’s No. 8.
Those that haven’t kept tabs on Loftus-Cheek since his €15 million move last summer might well be shocked at Tuesday’s performance, but it’s been coming all season. The way he plays feels like a bit of an X-factor in Serie A, and he’s now taken renewed confidence onto the Champions League stage.
In fact, every player that Milan buy from Chelsea seems to excel from the word go: Fikayo Tomori has been a mainstay in defence since January 2021, while Christian Pulisic’s start to life at San Siro has been excellent. Loftus-Cheek is simply the next success story for what is becoming a well-trodden transfer path.
His greatest enemy remains injuries. He’s already missed five games this season due to a muscle tear, and while Milan have tried to measure his minutes (he’s completed a full 90 just twice), he’s entering that curious paradox of “too injury prone to rely on, but too important to rest.” It’s the first time he’s been regarded with such reverence since he played for Chelsea’s youth teams, captaining them to FA Youth Cup success aged 18.
That simply serves as a marker for how impactful and important he’s been in Italy so far. Finally, after years in the wilderness, it’s starting to come together for Loftus-Cheek.
