AC Milan 3-1 Monza: Three things we learned – attacking flair and balance dilemma

AC Milan prevailed in the Trofeo Silvio Berlusconi last night, beating Monza 3-1, and they will thus head into the new season with good confidence. So, what are the main takeaways from the friendly against Alessandro Nesta’s side, let’s take a look! 

The season opener is now just three days away and while some questioned the scheduling of the Monza friendly (including yours truly), it did end up working well. Fonseca fielded two XIs, one for each half plus a few more subs, and no one was drained of energy as a result.

If you haven’t, we recommend checking out the player ratings for the game as well, seeing as some of them did really well. But for now, let’s take a look at three things we learned.

Attacking flair

The biggest positive from yesterday’s game was without a doubt the attacking flair. In the first half, Alexis Saelemaekers was toying with the defenders at times and Rafael Leao gave his trademark run a go a couple of times too. Chances were created, which is something Milan struggled with at times last season.

Yes, the defence is first on the list of things to fix, but it’s nice to see that all of the attackers are contributing to Milan doing well. Even in the second half we saw some great movement, with Mattia Liberali getting a nutmeg in straight away and Noah Okafor bursting down the flank towards goal. And Luka Jovic, like a striker, was at the right place at the right time.

This attacking flair will be very important for Milan this season as you cannot play, as well as rely, on the starters all the time. You need depth and if players like Samuel Chukwueze and Okafor can finally find some consistency, then the Rossoneri will arguably be very dangerous.

And we haven’t even mentioned the addition of Alvaro Morata (more on that later). In any case, Fonseca has shown that he has good ideas in possession and the players clearly believe in this, but the real litmus test is on Saturday.

Balance is not perfect yet

As alluded to, the defence still needs to be sorted – or rather the defensive phase – and we would like to preface by saying that Milan have made progress this summer. The players are much more compact in the defensive phase, and also in the build-up which leaves them less vulnerable to mistakes.

Then again, yesterday we saw a left-hand side that was far from ideal during Filippo Terracciano’s time on the pitch. Perhaps that was more his fault than anything, but you could clearly see that Fonseca instructed him to keep a high position. That might work with Theo Hernandez, but not with the Italian in transition.

The midfield also needs some help, with Yacine Adli and Yunus Musah not cutting it defensively, but at least they will probably almost never start together this season. Not in a high-profile game anyway, then Milan will rely on Ismael Bennacer/new signing and Tijjani Reijnders. Speaking of that duo, they did a good job of ‘remedying’ the balance in the second half yesterday.

All this to say that while progress has been made under Fonseca, time is still needed for the players to understand when and when not to move into certain positions. This was expected, of course, but those who were hoping for a miracle: the goose is cooked!

A mobile striker

Finally, we got to see Alvaro Morata make his ‘debut’ for Milan as he played from the first minute. He worked extremely hard from the first minute and moved all over the attacking area, which is exactly what we and Fonseca like to see.

Fonseca was able to exploit the qualities of Jonathan David, another mobile striker, and the hope is that it will be a perfect match with Morata too. Sure, the Spaniard is not as mobile, but it’s certainly a huge difference compared to Olivier Giroud.

Morata needs to work on his end product based on yesterday, but that might just be because he hasn’t played and trained that much since the Euros. It will be very interesting to see if he starts against Torino, but one would have to assume that he will.

It has been talked about on the podcast, but the feeling is that Morata could be more important as an all-round man rather than a goalscorer for Milan this season. He has great wingers next to him, so there is scope for many assists if the Rossoneri and Fonseca get things right.