Next Sunday, 14th of September 2014, AC Milan will travel to the Emilia-Romagna region to face Parma at Stadio Ennio Tardini for round 2 of the Italian Serie A.

The new AC Milan head coach could not have asked for a better start for his team and for his debut as the Rossoneri manager. The Milanese side completely hammered Lazio by 3-1 at San Siro two weeks ago and put up a fairly good performance to go along with. Inzaghi experimented a fairly versatile 4-3-3 system without the classical centre forward up in the box. The young Italian manager opted for a dynamic trio up front formed by Keisuke Honda, who acted as some sort of advanced playmaker, and by Menez and El Shaarawy, both acting as something quite similar to false nines or false inside forwards.

Their first opponents, Lazio, forced AC Milan to do some extra work and contributed to Diego López’s excellent debut scoring goals for Milan.

Inzaghi’s arrival was a breath of fresh air to AC Milan’s adrift vessel and a great complicity between the Italian manager and his players already seems to exist, as was noticeable at the Milanese side’s second goal against Lazio.

For their difficult travel to Parma, Inzaghi will still not be able to count on the contribution of Riccardo Montolivo, who is still recovering from his long term injury.

As for Parma, the Emilia-Romagna team didn’t start the new campaign in the best of ways as they were defeated at Cesena by 1-0. Roberto Donadoni, who performed a great job with Parma last season, saw his team being overthrown by the newcomers of Cesena and such defeat might have a negative impact at the team’s upcoming matches. Parma had a higher ball possession percentage and, in fact, had several more goal attempts than the hosts but they failed to score.

For the match against AC Milan, the former Italian international Roberto Donadoni will still not be able to rely on the contribution of Nicola Pozzi, who is currently sidelined due to injury.

When both sides met at Stadio Ennio Tardini last term, the home side won 3-2 on what was a fairly frantic match. Given both sides’ performance during the first round, AC Milan have to be considered favourites for the next Sunday’s match, although they will certainly need to work very hard in order to achieve the three points.

Parma

Stats: W-2 L-2 D-1

Recent Form - LWDWL

AC Milan

Stats: W-4 L-1 D-0

Recent Form - WWWLW

Possible Line-ups

Parma (4-3-3) - Mirante - Cassani - Paletta - Lucarelli - Gobbi - Acquah - Lodi - Jorquera - Biabiany - Palladino - Belfodil

AC Milan (4-3-3) - Diego Lopez - Abate - Alex - Daniele Bonera - Zapata - Andrea Poli - De Jong - Muntari - Keisuke Honda - El Shaarawi - Jeremy Menez

Prediction

Parma 1 AC Milan 2