The International Champions Cup is slowly coming to an end, with only a few matches left. One of the more intriguing of those is this one between AC Milan and Chelsea, two sides who didn’t perform up to their expected standards last season and who have new managers working to instill their vision on their new clubs.
AC Milan vs. Chelsea 2016 live stream: Time, TV schedule and how to watch International Champions Cup online
While neither team can win the North American leg of the International Champions Cup, a second win in the preseason competition would be a big boost for either team’s preparations.
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For Chelsea, that new manager is a familiar one for the Italian fans watching Milan, after they hired Antonio Conte, the ex-Juventus manager who helped thrust that club to glory and toppled Milan out of the limelight in the process. Conte has been aggressive in using new combinations of players during his pre-season preparations, looking for the right sets of tactics and talents and ideas to get the most out of his team. It’s definitely still early in the process for Conte, and some things are working while others definitely are not, but he’s on his way towards his goal of making Chelsea a title contender again.
Milan are in the midst of an increasingly ugly and, for fans, depressing ownership change, one that current club president Silvio Berlusconi seems to be making more difficult at every turn. It’s severely hampered their efforts to improve the squad this summer, and made new manager Vincenzo Montella’s job of getting his team ready more difficult. That’s been reflected to varying extents in their preseason matches -- they won their ICC opener against Bayern Munich on penalties, but didn’t have the firepower to avoid a stoppage-time equalizer to keep it from going to penalties. They lost 2-0 to Liverpool because their defenders are so limited that Liverpool were able to break them down and expose their weaknesses -- the only reason why it didn’t end with a much wider scoreline was because Liverpool backed off in the last 15 minutes of the match.
Neither of these teams are perfect, but they are hungry and eager to take a big step forward before the matches count for real. A win in this match would be big for either Chelsea or AC Milan, and their fight to get that win will make this match very, very well worth watching.
Fun AC Milan player to watch: M'Baye Niang
Milan’s transfer activity has been decidedly limited this summer, but that only helps open opportunities for players like Niang to step up bigger and better than ever. We finally started seeing signs that Niang’s significant talents were coming to fruition last season, proving to be Milan’s most consistent goalscoring threat for most of the second half of the season. How he plays against a team with a solid defense like Chelsea’s will be quite telling as to whether or not he’s ready to take the next step and become a true impact player, so Milan fans will want to keep a very close eye on him, while neutrals will want to watch just because he’s a fun and wonderfully talented player.
Fun Chelsea player to watch: Bertrand Traoré
While much of the focus on Chelsea’s attack is on high-powered stars like Eden Hazard or an exciting talent like Willian, they have a hungry young attacking talent in Traoré who has been playing very well so far in the ICC. He’s started both of their matches in the competition so far and opened some eyes, and looks like he could be well on his way to earning a role in Conte’s side. Another good performance like he’s been putting in, and a whole lot of people are going to be talking about Traoré like he’s the next big thing -- which he just might be.
Match Date/Time: Wednesday, 9 p.m. ET, 8 p.m. local
Venue: U.S. Bank Stadium, Minneapolis, Minn.
TV: ESPN2 (U.S. - Spanish), ESPN Deportes (U.S. - Spanish), PremiumSport HD (Italy)
Online: WatchESPN (U.S.), Chelsea TV (U.K.)
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