AC Milan dismantled visiting Lecce 3-0 at the Stadio Giuseppe Meazza on Sunday evening, and the margin was built on a structure that held from the 14th minute onward: an early goal, a composed second-half double, and a Lecce side that never found the foothold to threaten any of it.
It was AC Milan defender Strahinja Pavlović who fed Christian Pulišić in the 14th minute, the American forward converting to give the hosts the lead before Lecce had settled. That goal set the tone for a match in which Ruben Amorim's Milan were rarely troubled. The visitors arrived having collected just one win from their last three Serie A matches, conceding seven goals in that span, and the fragility that had defined their recent form was visible again here.
The second goal arrived in the 61st minute, and it came from a combination that illustrated Milan's depth in the middle third. AC Milan forward Gonçalo Ramos provided the assist, and Rabiot — arriving late into the move — finished to make it 2-0. Three minutes after the hour, with Lecce already chasing the match, Amorim's side were effectively through.
The third goal belonged to Diego Moreira. Introduced in the 70th minute as a substitute for Alexis Saelemaekers, the Milan winger needed just three minutes to mark his appearance: his 73rd-minute finish made it 3-0 and closed the contest entirely. There is a particular kind of confidence embedded in that sequence — a player enters the pitch with the game already won and still finds a way to contribute to the scoreline. Moreira's goal was not a consolation or a footnote; it was the punctuation mark on a controlled performance.
Lecce's evening was shaped by what they could not do rather than what they tried. Di Francesco's side — Eusebio Di Francesco, coaching Lecce — made three substitutions simultaneously at the 70th minute, a triple change that arrived after the second goal had already settled the contest. By then, the tactical problem was structural: Lecce had no answer for Milan's movement in behind, and the yellow card shown to Danilo Veiga in the 58th minute added a layer of caution to a side that needed to take risks. Lassana Coulibaly and Joël Monteiro led the line for the visitors but were given little to work with. The 0-4 home defeat to Roma earlier in the campaign had already signalled that this Lecce group could be undone by quality opposition; Sunday confirmed it is not an isolated vulnerability.
The result sharpens Milan's form arc in a way the earlier weeks of the season had not fully delivered. Amorim's side came into this fixture having drawn two of their last three — at Juventus and at Lazio — without losing, which spoke to defensive solidity but left questions about the attack's capacity to be decisive. Across their last five matches including this one, Milan have now collected eleven points from a possible fifteen, with three wins and two draws and no defeats. The clean sheet here — their second of the season in Serie A — reinforces that the defensive structure Amorim has installed is functioning. Lecce, by contrast, move to one win and no draws from their last three, with six goals conceded in that window.
A month from now, this match will be remembered as the evening Amorim's Milan showed they could be both controlled and clinical — and that Diego Moreira, three minutes after stepping off the bench, was already part of the reason why.