Italian Serie A
2025-08-23 - AC Milan vs Cremonese
A Sports Betting Pick by Cafa
Italy Serie A - Round 1
San Siro, Milano, Lombardy, Italy (80,018)
Saturday, 23 August 2025, 20:45 CET
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Milan Team News
Milan fans can rejoice as they got the honour of seeing through the last season of the midfield maestro’s final season in football. We’re talking about Luka Modric, of course, and although there are naysayers because of his age, we believe he’ll make this entire Milan team shine and possibly even be a scudetto contender. Teams that have Modric tend to win trophies, you know.
With an offensive trio of Pulisic, Gimenez and Leao, and a midfield full of box-to-box players, the addition of Modric seems perfect, the missing ingredient to tie it all together. If all goes to plan, if Modric is healthy and his game time is cleverly managed like it was at Real Madrid, all of a sudden Milan could be a much more serious side. Not one that concedes 43 times in a season and that is never reliable as a favourite.
Tijani Reijnders left for Manchester City to thrive in a more technical team, and Theo Hernandez will be missed on the left back, but upcoming star defensive midfielder Ardon Jashari joined in from Club Brugge. Samuele Ricci, Koni de Winter and Pervis Estupinan are other notable additions. It seems Milan didn’t make any drastic direction changes, they just filled the roster with some more very reliable players. Because reliability was one thing they were lacking.
In any case, it will be exciting to watch Milan this season and see what this team will become under Modric’s guidance. This writer certainly won’t miss a Modric - sorry, Milan - match in 2025/26.
Cremonese Team News
Someone has to be the lowest-valued team in Serie A, and actually Hellas Verona and Cremonese share that title with a total player market value of just above €59m, which means even Lecce and Pisa, at €86m, are giants from where they’re standing.
Unlike Sassuolo, that made proper transfers to strengthen the squad, Cremonese did the lowest thing they could do, loan in some players from top clubs. They brought in Warren Bondo (21, €10m, Milan) who is now actually one sixth of their total team value, and four more loanees that aren’t worth mentioning as they aren’t rising stars but basically a surplus to requirements at their parent clubs.
But apparently Cremonese liked the 29-year-old Belgian versatile midfielder that was in their league, Serie B, last season, that they’ve decided to splash €3.3m on him to make him a record transfer. Apparently Jari Vandeputte, who’s in Italian lower leagues since 2017/18, was the missing ingredient for their Serie A upgrade.
We can’t say much about Cremonese just yet. Let’s be fair, no one follows Serie B. What we can say is that Cremonese finished 4th, in a league where no team below them had a double-digit positive goal difference. In a league of 20, 14 teams (placed from 5th to 18th) had from 55 to 41 points. Cittadella and Cosenza were awful, 14 teams were practically equal, and then the four top sides - Cremonese the worst of them - were better than the average.
Cremonese were here in 2022/23 and finished 19th with a 5-12-21 36:69 record; only Sampdoria was worse. Then, in Serie B 2023/24 they actually did quite well, finishing 4th with a 19-10-9 50:32 record, and then followed that last year with another 4th place but a worse 16-13-9 62:44 record. Difference is, they defeated Spezia in the playoffs whereas they lost to Venezia the year before.
And we know how Venezia fared in the top flight. Instant drop. Same is expected of Cremonese here, they are bringing nothing of note to the league. We expect them to get 5 wins at most, while conceding around 70 goals.
Probable Lineups
(to be updated 24h prior to kick off)
The Betting Market
Home win is priced at 1.33 and that sounds like a decent way to increase your bankroll by a third, even with Rafael Leao likely absent. Over 2.5 is priced at 1.66 and you'd be likely to going for a 3-0 win with that bet as Cremonese is unlikely to score.
That being said, BTTS-No is priced at 1.80 and that seems an unreasonably high price. Do we really expect Cremonese to score here on San Siro? Is Milan's defence that bad?
Well yes, they can be, they're known to be wearing the proverbial flip-flops for the first few weeks of the season. Last season, they conceded 2 from Torino at home, then 2 at Parma, 2 at Lazio, before finally keeping a clean sheet with a 4-0 home win against Venezia. Make of that what you will.
The Betting Verdict
Milan and Cremonese are a world apart. The visitors aren’t even a side that is at least somewhat comfortable in Serie A and that knows how to play against huge favourites, and they aren’t even Venezia, a side that played on the front foot and aimed to score first.
The price on Milan should be 1.10 here, there is no doubt about the winner, yet it’s far greater. If you’re looking for bankers go for a Milan win. We’ll take the tasty -1.50 handicap in what could turn out to be a 4-0 win, which just happens to be the result of the 4th-round match last season when Milan hosted newly promoted Venezia.
Milan was a confident favourite at home against bottom half sides last season. They only had problems with Genoa (0-0) and Cagliari (1-1). Everyone else lost at San Siro. Worry not, Cremonese will lose big too, whether they score or not.
The Statistics :
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The Pick :
Milan 4-0 Cremonese
