AC Milan won their fourth Champions League game in a row last night by beating Red Star, and yet the headlines are overwhelmingly negative again.
As Calciomercato.com write, the post-match comments from the head coach Paulo Fonseca have generated a lot of discussion as he called out his players for their attitude and even threatened to play Futuro players in the next game.
Who might he have been aiming it at? One of the recipients, at least judging by what happened late in the game, could be Davide Calabria. The right-back and captain came off in the 83rd minute amidst boos from San Siro, but did not approach Fonseca.
Instead, he walked along the edge of the technical area. The Portuguese coach went after him to give him the usual acknowledgement of his efforts, but Calabria never looked at him. He did manage to pat his shoulder but without receiving any response.
Now of course it is highly unlikely that Fonseca’s tirade was aimed solely and exclusively at Calabria, while it is also probable that the defender was unhappy more with his performance and the reception from the crowd than directly with his coach.
However, it is clear that not everything is rosy within the camp and given the talk of a team meeting at Milanello today, it will be interesting to see what emerges after.
How dare you to sub our big best captain?
When calabria go away i will drink 1 week to celebrate.
But when emerson go away i will drink 2 weeks to celebrate.
Emerson will never go away. When he retires at 45 (as the club captain) he will take the role of the sporting director.
Or become youth coach lol
Be careful of what you wish.
For years the management tried to upgrade Calabria only to end up with downgrade versions of him and now we have Emerson.
Don’t think they’ll go for Bellanova of Frimpong, but rather a player so bad we cannot even imagine it possible.
Kevin Constant? 🤭
TBH, seeing Emerson on the pitch makes me miss Constant and his elegant play. He was 100x the player Emerson is.
Don’t you miss kalulu. Management kick kalulu out after they got emerson.
This team is fuxxed up, it looks that everyone hates everyone here ,toxic
If you can not get trophy, you can still be famous with drama. The drama queen trophyless cardinale milan.
He’s having troubles with not one, but several locker room leaders, not competent enough to be the coach of this team.
He doesn’t have the skills; this is not a small team like one of those he previously coached.. sorry..
He got picked totally by accident, for the size of this club..
Exactly
He seemed to arrive and wanted to make his mark by ‘bossing’ all of the most experienced players who have been the core for the past 5 years.
What’s worse is that so many on here seem delighted with the fact and love nothing more than slagging off our longest serving players.
Who brought Fonseca here in the first place? Did Maldini do that?
If this is true, then both the Coach and management should strip him of the captaincy, he is not worthy of being the Captain, Gabbia should instantly be made captain, he deserves it, yes the Coach should begin to integrate players from the Futuro team, that is what should be our primary focus from now, not going out to spend huge amounts of money on players..
Integrate players from the Futuro so you can turn around hurl abuse at them?
He was literally coaching the team out there.
He was telling players where to stand.
And then he gets taken off and replaced with Emerson Royal.
I’d have done the same.
Fonseca really needs to go. He’s alienated nearly every one of the senior players.
Calabria’s form was average at best long before Fonseca. And it’s not Fonseca alienating him – it’d management’s call to run out his contract and let him walk for free.
Calabria isn’t good enough. Emerson isn’t good enough. The RB position keeps limping on.
Noone wants to buy Valabria anyway. So why shouldn’t he leave for free. He’ll probably end up in Monza cause he can’t move away from his mom.
Calabria cannot play for 90 minutes I guess. And Fonseca maybe learn with 2 players injury early this match. So he avoid tp take another risk. Relax bro, Calabria still the captain…
The sub didn’t look necessary.
When you’re trying to score, you don’t sub your right back with….another right back ?!! Perhaps the idea was that since Emerson is more offensive, he might provide more help going forward but I think we already saw that Emerson is as helpful offensively. as Mike Maignan and I might be harsh on Mike Maignan here.
Also Calabria didn’t look tired nor he was fooled or anything.
Calabria was terrible this game as he always is. Emerson is not great but he’s a better option than Calabria. The arrogance of Calabria to be angry for being subbed off when he has been as bad as he has been. He should be grateful for any minutes he gets. Hopefully we can move him in January if we can find anyone willing to take him.
You’re pretty much the only person that tries to convince himself that Emerson is better than Calabria. All the others either see them as equal or Calabria as better. You hate Calabria so much that you convinced yourself that Emerson is better no matter what he does. I don’t know if it’s to make it look that the management made a good decision (they didn’t) or if it’s another reason.
Emerson has done NOTHING better than Calabria. Calabria barely played this season and already got a goal and almost got an assist had Abraham been a decent finisher. Emerson is still trying to cross the ball right for the entire season and needs Musah to play in front of him.
Calabria hasn’t been good yesterday (although the second half was ok) but he is way better than you described. Crvena Zvezda hasn’t done any meaningful attack from his flank (or the other from that matter). There wasn’t the usual crosses that go from our right to our left. Their goal was a mistake from Musah and most of their attacks came though the middle.
All facts. It’s about who bought who.
Not a peep about Musah, an alleged “good signing”. Smh 🙄
I agree that Calabria can get by against Serie B , and Serbian League teams. That’s about it. But when we beat Inter and Real Madrid it was Emerson playing. Just watch the first 10 minutes of yesterday’s game and tell me you think Calabria can still play. He almost gave the game away twice with terrible passes and missed a decent shooting chance putting it about 30 rows deep into the crowd. He’s slow, he can’t move any more, always out of position. He is deservedly a backup to Emerson, who is not that good either.
And you are wrong about the attacks and crosses. When Crevena hit the crossbar, it was from, you guessed it , a cross from our right side after Calabria was beaten. Sometimes I wonder if you guys even watch the game…
And IKWYLS projecting the way he looks at things onto other people.
It was Fonseca’s choice to put Emerson instead of Calabria in both Real and Inter’s game. There is no indicative to say that he would have performed worse and he was injured before the derby. Under Pioli Calabria has done well against Spaletti’s Napoli and PSG in San Siro with far better performances than whatever Emerson has shown so far. It was the genius coach that decided that Calabria should start against B team and serbian team and that Emerson is the main fullback, he is the one after all who requested him. Considering that Fonseca still sees Loftus-Cheek as an attacking midfielder, that he ruined Pulisic who was scoring in every game as right winger, who still insists on the 4-2-3-1 despite us not fitted for that system, I wouldn’t put en emphasis on Fonseca’s choice.
” Just watch the first 10 minutes of yesterday’s game and tell me you think Calabria can still play.” There is a reason while I’d rather watch the full 90 minutes instead of 10 minutes, because watching 10 minutes will make one reach wrong conclusions.
Even the eye test aside, the stats don’t backup Royal. Last season and this season, aside from aerial duels (since he is the taller player) and xAssist (even though his last assist goes back to august 2022), he has nothing on Calabria.
Bringing Emerson was one of the worst mistakes this management has ever done. He wasn’t needed, he was too expensive and we had more urgent priorities. The difference between this purchase and the horrible blunders of getting Origi and Ballo-Touré is that both of them were free or costed pennies. This one costed 15M€, has a higher wage than Calabria and took the place of a foreigner.
But even if we had to bring a right back this summer, because we were so desperate, we could at least have gone for a good right back, like Bellanova (who happens to come from our youth) or even Thiago Santos, but no, it had to be Emerson of all players.
“He ruined Pulisic” Hah. What an utterly ridiculous statement. Because he went one game without a goal or assist? Pulisic is having his best season ever. And are you giving Fonseca credit for Rejnder’s improvement? Probably not.
Neither Calabria or Emerson are good going forward but at this point Emerson is a better defender and has better pace than Calabria. The fact that you have to back multiple years to find games when supposedly Calabria did well against good teams says everything. Calabria is not good anymore and it has nothing to do with Emerson. He was bad last season. Florenzi was our better RB last season. He’s done. I don’t care that he’s Italian, I don’t care that he’s the captain. He’s done.
Yes Fonseca is ruining Pulisic. Pulisic was having a huge season scoring in every game and what Fonseca does ? He puts him as a CAM. It was obvious that Pulisic is not comfortable as a CAM, his performances dropped and he barely contributed to any goal, but Fonseca does that because the man doesn’t want to play anything rather than a 4-2-3-1, even though in our ONLY 2 good games this seasons, we didn’t use a 4-2-3-1 and Pulisic was a RW.
I never said anything about Reijnders, don’t make up arguments I didn’t make. But since you brought Reijnders, it’s nice for him to have someone do the dirty work for him. Last year, we didn’t have a Fofana type of midfielder and Reijnders had to defend (which he cannot do).
I didn’t go back multiples year what the hell are you talking about, PSG was literally last season and I had to choose it and Napoli because we didn’t play well against any big team aside from these 2 since 2022.
Yeah Emerson is much better as a defender, that’s why Fonseca had to field Musah in front of him to cover for his mistakes. Even in his best games, he was somewhat always involved in a goal scored against us. But this is season we have so many bad players (him, Theo, Tomori, Pavlovic, Loftus-Cheek,…) that it is hard for Emerson to stand out.
You’re an actually smooth brain imbecile 🤦♂️ Davide has done more this season in 90 minutes than Emreon has managed all season. You clearly don’t watch the games whatsoever
And yet everyone was calling for an upgrade on Calabria last summer. Even the management. Something doesn’t compute. Why upgrade then?
Not everyone.
I didn’t call for an upgrade, not because I thought Calabria is so great (he isn’t) but because our team was so dysfonctional that we had other priorities. Yet we choose Emerson and dropped our other right back (Kalulu).
We needed to reinforce the midfield with a DM, picked Fofana (not a DM) with no reinforcement in the midfield for him or Reijnders.
And we still have no LB deputy. Theo could literally sleep on the field and we can’t pick someone else.
And I’ll say this yet again:
If we were so insistent on having a RB despite having at that time 5 RBs, at least pick a good RB, not the Emerson Royal of this world.
I would tell giga94 not to waste his time on that fella.
It’s beating against air. Nothing applies. And he is set in his delusions and or self belief.
Calabria’s performance over the years has been below par. Pioli helped to block Milan’s chase for Singo, to play right back. His performance last night was terrible. He was always in a rush, and we kept losing the ball. Milan needs a better Captain, maybe, Mike. If he walks away from the coach, after 83 minutes of under-par game, then, he is not serious. Fonseca tried for him, allowing him to stay that long on the pitch. We need a decent right-back in January.
calabria is a better player atleast he did something in the attack emerson is always useless in attack and might be slighty better in defence beacuse of being bigger more physical but is useless in the attack
And good in him. If we needed a result, and I saw it was getting pulled off for f***** Emerson, I’d be appaled too. Fonseca is hopeless. That’s what, 4 or 5 players who’s trust he’s already lost? It’s clear the leaders of the team don’t respect him, and why would they? Awful tactics, terrible lineup choices, horrendous decion making, refusal to rest or sub players intelligently. There has been literally no improvement in this team overall. The only smart decision thus far has been signing Fofana. He needs to go, or we have no hope of even making top 4, much less challenging
Calabria whatever you think of him always works very hard, so i dont think the rant was aimed at him.
More likely Theo and even Reijnders who are class players but were anonymous.
The manager has not earned the right to be so stubborn (like Guardiola or Ancelloti)
Play 433 which is what the squad is designed for or leave.
Imagine playing RLC, Musah, Reijnders at the same time and all 3 out of their natural position? Its insanity
Plays Pulisic in a position that suits him less also
some ac milan fans lack comprehension when players re not giving their best the coach ve to caution them to improve but u guys blem the coach y