Let's look at one of the opposition players now; a man who spends prodigious amounts of time getting in the face of the opposition... attacking midfielder Yacine Adli (#7).

With the wild man hair and beard attached to a 186cm (6' 1") frame, I suspect that the sight of him rushing toward you would be a tad disconcerting. (Though he's relatively thin with it.)

At this point he's getting in the face of Edoardo Bove who is dribbling the ball into attack but within a moment he'll have pivoted to face our forward Houssem Aouar, who he suspects will receive the ball.

I'm amazed by the number of sequences of play that I shot which had Adli running intensely and energetically into the fray.

He's only 23 (pushing 24) so he still has a lot of energy. He was born in Vitry-sur-Seine, a French commune in the southeastern suburbs of Paris, to Algerian parents. That makes him eligible to play for either France or Algeria internationally, though he has chosen to play for the former. (After all, France can win a World Cup. Algeria, until its football administration gets its guano together, is... less likely.)

The latter part of his youth career and first part of his senior career occurred at Paris Saint-Germain (2013-2019). He made only one appearance with the senior side before being sold to French team Bordeaux (for a reported €5.5 million) at the end of the 2019 season, for a 4 1/2 year contract.

However in 2021 he was sold to AC Milan, though he was loaned back to Bordeaux until the end of the 2021/22 season. The 2022/23 season was not great with him appearing only 6 times as a substitute, because he didn't fit with the club's then formations. To his credit he didn't let that get to him and 2024 saw him play 24 of 38 matches for a total of 1,412 minutes. From the way he was throwing himself into this match I suspect that he plans to grab even more playing time next year. Of course, that depends on what the plans of the new Milan bozo... sorry, that was a typo, it should have been "coach", Paolo Fonseca has in mind.