Diego Moreira made his first appearance as a Milan player on Sunday, thrown straight into an away match at Juventus, and the early returns were mixed at best.
Gazzetta dello Sport described the performance as "a slightly flat soufflé, which begins to cook well and then folds in on itself when the time comes to enjoy it." That feels about right. No one should be drawing firm conclusions from 61 minutes of football in what was, by most accounts, Milan's worst collective display of the season so far. But the outline of a player was visible, even if the detail was not.
The raw numbers from his hour on the pitch tell a story of industry without much end product. Moreira registered 59 touches, a respectable tally given that Estupiñán managed 66 on the opposite flank. He attempted five crosses, the most of any player on the pitch, and completed 27 passes. He won one tackle and lost one. In duels he came out on top just twice from eight attempts. The figures that stand out negatively are 18 turnovers and three dribbles conceded, both the worst of any Milan player on the day.
For a wing-back expected to contribute defensively as well as in attack, those last two numbers need to come down. Context softens the picture, though. Çelik's aggressive man-marking gave Moreira little breathing room, and there were stretches where he found himself isolated with limited support from team-mates around him.
What did come through, according to Gazzetta, is the instinct that made him attractive to Milan in the first place. When Moreira receives the ball, his first look is forward, scanning for space to advance before anything else. His footwork is clean and his intent is always vertical. Those are the traits that fit Ruben Amorim's system on paper: aggression, pace, directness. None of them truly materialised against Juventus, but the orientation was there even when the execution was not.
There is also the question of positioning. Moreira has spent recent seasons playing predominantly on the left, despite stating his preference for the right. He got the right-sided role on Sunday, which may mean an adjustment period as he relearns the angles and spaces on that flank.
Amorim's trust in handing him a debut of this difficulty suggests the coach sees something worth building on, and the mechanisms around Moreira will only sharpen as he settles into the system and the squad around him.