It was good while it lasted, but Newcastle’s European odyssey is over. On a night of wildly shifting emotions on Tyneside, Samuel Chukwueze stepped off the Milan substitutes’ bench and promptly scored with his first touch, sending the Serie A side into the Europa League as Eddie Howe’s horizons narrowed.
The reality that there will be no more midweek trips to the continent, at least this season, for Howe’s ultimately exhausted players came as a nasty shock to the disconsolate Newcastle fans at the end of an evening that Milan spent largely in the background and bullied was created by the initially excellent Joelinton and co.
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When Joelinton led Newcastle, a place in the last 16 of the Champions League beckoned, but in the end Paris Saint-Germain’s draw against Dortmund was enough to earn the Ligue 1 side that place.
Still, a draw would have been enough for Newcastle to reach the Europa League, but after Christian Pulisic equalized for Stefano Pioli’s side, fatigue began to disrupt the ferocity of Howe’s intense pressing and Rafael Leão and friends sensed opportunity.
When Leão missed a sitter it looked like he had gone past Milan, but then Pioli made a very inspired trio of substitutions and all three newcomers featured in the winner, with Luka Jovic and Noah Okafor heavily involved in the elegant passing move that led to Chukwueze sweeping the ball. past Martin Dubravka a minute later.
All pre-match talk focused on Newcastle’s third-choice goalkeeper Loris Karius, who could be making his first Champions League appearance since his disastrous performance in the 2018 final for Liverpool. Instead, Dubravka passed a late fitness test, leaving Karius to take his place on a slim home substitutes bench with just seven players.
It reflected an injury crisis at St James’ Park that has now led to Newcastle losing three straight games, but it could not stop their manager from demanding his team “come out with all guns blazing”.
They did not disappoint, continually forcing Milan into defensive blind alleys and attacking cul-de-sacs as Pioli moved around his technical area in an increasingly agitated manner.
But even though Milan’s defense remained somewhat ersatz – Fikayo Tomori was their only fit centre-back – Newcastle’s initial attacking noise and fury did not amount to as much as promised. Although Mike Maignan looked suitably relieved when Kieran Trippier failed to apply enough dip to a dangerously placed free-kick, Pioli’s goalkeeper was not worked as hard as Howe would have hoped.
Or at least not until he was beaten by Joelinton’s shot, only for the excellent Tomori to intercept thanks to a fantastic block just as the onrushing Miguel Almirón was about to tap over the line.
Howe may not have been too happy that, instead of immediately shooting with his right, Almirón waited for the loose ball to fall to his left, which preceded Tomori’s intervention.
Dubravka, meanwhile, remained largely untested as Olivier Giroud and company struggled to stretch Newcastle’s recovering keeper. Although Milan’s gifted Portuguese left winger Leão occasionally showed off his destabilizing change of pace, once fooling Trippier before firing wide, he often seemed to represent a one-man threat on the counter-attack.
Newcastle was for a long time unrecognizable from the team that conceded seven goals in the previous two games against Everton and Tottenham. At times Milan simply didn’t know how to deal with it and struggled to create any semblance of a passing rhythm.
Hats off to 17-year-old academy graduate Lewis Miley, whose trademark clever pass paved the way for Joelinton to almost lift the roof off the stadium by firing Newcastle into a deserved 33 minute lead.
After a steady touch, Joelinton’s subsequent shot from the edge of the area flew inexorably past Maignan. Howe’s left-sided midfielder joined Newcastle as a £40million centre-forward and was happy to remind everyone why scouts once saw him as a new Alan Shearer.
Milan temporarily became so nervous that they increasingly resorted to optimistic long balls, while Maignan was so irritated by a perceived lack of protection that he argued long and hard with the referee even after receiving a booking for dissent.
If the visiting goalkeeper had reason to dislike being attacked by Joelinton, his overreaction seemed a microcosm of the simmering tensions within a Serie A club where the American owners have just appointed Zlatan Ibrahimovic as special adviser.
Ibrahimovic would certainly have put away the decent shooting opportunity that Wilson spurned early in the second half, but the former Milan and Sweden forward may have found faint reasons for hope in the way Newcastle eventually began to struggle to maintain their early pace and the Pioli players enjoyed it late. a bit of possession as the second half progressed.
When? Monday, 11am. Each group winner will be paired with a runner-up, but teams from the same qualifying group or country will be separated.
Group winners: Arsenal, Bayern Munich, Manchester City, Real Madrid, Real Sociedad, Atlético Madrid, Borussia Dortmund, Barcelona
Runners-up Copenhagen, Internazionale, Napoli, PSV Eindhoven,
RB Leipzig, Lazio, Paris Saint-Germain, Porto
Suddenly, even the excellent Joelinton began to look human. Howe would have liked his former Milan midfielder Sandro Tonali not to serve a 10-month ban for breaching Italian gambling rules.
The Newcastle manager raised eyebrows after Pulisic equalized at the end of a move that saw Tomori connect with Leao’s deep cross but mis-finish a shot attempt. Does not matter; Giroud pushed the ball across the goal for Pulisic to apply the finishing touch from six yards to make it 1-1.
Despite Maignan working wonders to somehow deflect Bruno Guimarães’ glorious curved shot onto the crossbar, Leão, clean through, shot fractionally wide, with the goal at his mercy. He thought he had ruined Milan’s chances, but Chukwueze had other ideas.