3 Areas for Carlos Bacca to Improve on to Become an AC Milan Great

Carlos Bacca has been one of the most successful transfer buys AC Milan have made in the last three or four years.  It’s arguable that only Giacomo Bonaventura has been a better find.

The Colombian filled a need that had been festering at Milan for years.  Since the 2012 sale of Zlatan Ibrahimovic to Paris Saint-Germain, the Rossoneri has lacked a dependable goalscorer.  

The likes of Giampaolo Pazzini, Alexandre Pato, Rubinho, Bojan Krkic, Stephan El Shaarawy, Alessandro Matri, Mario Balotelli, Fernando Torres, Jeremy Menez and Mattia Destro have all tried to fill that need in the intervening seasons.

Of those strikers, only El Shaarawy, Balotelli and Menez had any real degree of success, and even then there were caveats.  

El Shaarawy’s explosion of goals in 2012-13 came almost entirely in the first half of the season before he tailed off, ground down by experiencing the rigors of a three-competition season for the first time.  Balotelli exploded as El Sha burned out, scoring 13 times in the second half of that season before returning to more ordinary form the next season.

Menez led the team in scoring last season, but half of his goals were from the penalty spot, and as the season wore on, he started killing as many attacking moves as he finished.

Bacca has mostly cured those woes.  He’s scored 17 times this season, tied for second in the league with Juventus’ Paulo Dybala.  It’s a sparkling record, the best total in the league for Milan since Ibrahimovic won Capocannoniere honors with 28 in his final year at the club in 2011-12.

Ibrahimovic is the closest Milan have come over the last few years to generating a striker of legendary status.  Had he stayed a few more years, the big Swede may have added his name to a list that includes the likes of Andriy Shevchenko and Filippo Inzaghi.

Can Bacca make that list?  He certainly can, but there are things he needs to do in …

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