Paulo Fonseca is once again deserving of credit for the choices that he made during AC Milan’s 3-1 victory over Club Brugge, a report has claimed.
This morning’s edition of Corriere dello Sport (via MilanNews) has their analysis of the game at San Siro last night, remarking that Milan are finally off the mark in the Champions League despite a less than stellar performance.
Fonseca’s team managed to beat Brugge and capture their first victory, and how the victory came about is of little importance, even if it will be the subject of discussion and analysis around Milanello in these days leading up to Saturday’s match at the Dall’Ara against Bologna.
The end result is not only down to the players on the pitch – who nevertheless gave themselves a major wake-up call after the visitors drew level with 10 men – but also to the head coach, who was courageous and correct in the decisions he made during the match.
To avoid any kind of underestimation, the Portuguese had decided to rely on his best team from the first minute, with Rafael Leao and Theo Hernandez starting again on their respective flanks after their absence against Udinese. The two were far from terrible, it must be said, but Ruben Loftus-Cheek struggled a bit and came off.
In place of the winger and the attacking midfielder it was Noah Okafor and Samuel Chukwueze who came on, and both were decisive with two assists for the surprising brace by Tijjani Reijnders. In short, Fonseca was right once again in his choices.
It was almost as if he wanted to demonstrate and confirm that the geopolitics around the red and black Milan has changed, and that a different Milan can really exist compared to the one we have learned to know over the years.
The paper conclude that fans and the media must give credit to the former Lille manager, who was good at being able to understand and interpret the way that the game was going, tweaking things and getting instant rewards.
As Kush said on his channel, it wasn’t so much Leao coming off as it was RLC coming off with Pulisic moving to central midfield. Everything flowed better with Puli in the middle. It could have been very successful with Leao on the left as well. The addition of Chuk in his now good form made a big difference too. Hopefully we see that next match from the start: Chuk, Puli, Leao, with Morata up top.
Carmarda should be featuring in Acmilan matches often but credit should be given to Okafor, pulisic and chukwueze rejnder tried but I want to be seeing bartasaghi,musah and zeroli to be featuring in Acmilan matches young ones can be better than old Loftus cheek and I can’t give Fonseca credit yet until will win a tough match like beating realmadrid then I can be convinced.
Nice one my bro
Well, we need 25 players and not only 11 stars. Theo is not in form and Leao did play well only without the last final touch.
What Milan was missing is bench and in next 2 o 3 years, Milan can develop in strong team with 25 players.
This year Okafor and Chukwueze started to produce something. We missing Bennacer, and defence have 4 players who can take frst team spot any time.
This is more important because of final number of games in this year 4 competitions…
We gotta give him credit for the subs (I don’t think Pioli would have dared to sub out Leao at the 60th minute in a must win game while we’re dead lost).
That being said, part of the reason why we looked so trash against Brugge was his lineup and tactics.
With all due respect to Brugge, but it shouldn’t take us miraculous subs against 10 of them to secure the win. It should have been one of those games where we get the win early on and manage fatigue in the second half. Against better teams we would already been dead lost by the 60th minute if we played like yesterday.
Kudos to Fonseca for subs where they strated playing as an actual team with Ok4 and Chuk.
But this was a 10 man Brugge and we were struggling. They even bagged a goal playing man down against Milan at San Siro. Chill.
I will probably with time understand the impact of Fonseca’s ways with his interpretation of the game. Hopefully one day I’ll appreciate the fact that he weaned us off our dependence with Leao, he helped rediscover Chuku and Okafor, he built a new project around new players, he was the first to put Theao in their place…but right now I have an uneasy feeling around how we have to dig deep to win games…I still feel it is the luck of the die. The team just don’t convince me right now. But I’ll wait for the day that this comments of mine will be replaced by glowing reviews of the Fonseca way of doing things…