Forward turned the derby on its head with a quickfire double that breathed life into the title race – and the dreaded No 9 shirt
Even Olivier Giroud was starting to wonder if he might have jinxed himself. The Frenchman had no hesitation in accepting Milan’s No 9 shirt after he joined last summer, shrugging off the fact that no player in a decade had hit double figures while wearing it in Serie A. Ten players had tried and failed – among them such talented goalscorers as Gonzalo Higuaín, Fernando Torres and André Silva – but Giroud insisted: “I’m not superstitious.”
By the turn of the year, he was sounding a little less confident. “I don’t believe in the curse of the No 9 shirt,” he told Milan’s in-house TV station in January. “But I have thought about it a few times after all these physical issues I’ve been having.” Giroud had begun confidently, scoring twice in his home debut: a 4-1 win over Cagliari. Since then, though, his season had been a constant stop-start. He missed time due to Covid, then lower back pain, then a hamstring injury. Prior to Saturday’s derby against Inter, he had started seven league games in six months.
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