The old saying ‘be careful what you wish for’ was uttered by some after Stefano Pioli was given the boot at the end of last season, and they might just be repeating it now.
Milan’s difficult start to the 2024-25 season has drawn comparisons with the start to Marco Giampaolo’s tenure five years ago, one which didn’t last very long and saw Pioli come in to try and fix what was broken.
An almost half-decade journey then followed under Pioli, delivering a Scudetto and a Champions League semi-final, but when he left at the end of last season the overwhelming consensus was that his time had come.
Are the Rossoneri better off? Our colleagues at SempreMilan.it compared the first 12 games of last season with Fonseca’s start so far.
The results
The first item to analyse is obviously the one related to the points obtained: 23 for Pioli (including two in the Champions League), 17 for Fonseca (including three in the Champions League).
To further undermine the position of the Portuguese coach is the fact that Milan did not fail to obtain 20 points from this many games in the league during any full season under the previous coach (2020-21 onwards).
In the first 12 games of last season with Pioli on the bench, Milan conceded 12 goals and lost three games, while under Fonseca they have conceded 16 goals and lost five match.
The three games lost by the Parma-born manager were all against high-profile opponents such as Juventus, PSG and Inter. Eight of the 12 goals conceded were in two of those games (the embarrassing 5-1 against Inter and three against PSG).
Fonseca’s defeats have almost all come against teams that are on paper a mix, such as Parma and Fiorentina but also Liverpool, Bayer Leverkusen and Napoli.
It is above all the distribution of goals conceded by Fonseca that is worrying: there are six matches in which the Rossoneri have conceded at least two goals, exactly 50% of the games played.
The attack
In terms of goals scored, Fonseca’s side have scored 20 in the first 12 games of the season, which four more than Pioli last year. Scoring goals has not been a problem, and they have only failed to score in two games thus far.
However, under Pioli, there were 152 shots (12 per game) of which 50 were on target (an average of 4.1 per game), a figure that shows his team were not very precise in front of goal.
One thing worth mentioning is that under Fonseca Milan have been able to count upon 11 different scorers so far this season: Okafor, Abraham, Gabbia, Chukwueze, Pavlovic, Leao, Reijnders, Fofana, Morata, Theo and Pulisic.
With the Portuguese in the first 12 games, Milan have had an average of 14.5 shots per game (174), of which only 5.6 per match were on target. With the new coach, the Diavolo shoot more but hit the target at the same rate as last season with Pioli.
The build-up
Moving on to the build-up phase of the game, the number of Live-ball Passes (a pass with the ball in play that led to a shot) rewards Fonseca with an average of 18.3 (220 total) while Pioli stands at 16.8 per game (202).
However, looking at the same data but relating to the passes that led to a goal, things change: Fonseca’s Milan in this area have an average of 1.6 per game, while Pioli in the same number of games last season built 1.8 goals from passing actions.
Given the emphasis that the former Lille and Roma coach placed on possession-based domination and radically changing the style of football, the only statistic that truly speaks in his favour is the goals scored.
Where Milan have improved under Fonseca is, perhaps surprisingly, in the number of goals scored from set pieces: last year under Pioli there was only one goal from a dead-ball situation in 12 games, while with Fonseca the figure rises to four.
No matter how you spin it pioli needed to go. The dude played ruben on AM ffs. After he brought him to be a mezzala..After he thought kruinc can play a dm in 433.. o jeez.
Fonseca. I’m not gonna say anything about Fonseca.. I will say that we meed a sporting director and that ibra needs to go and moncada can go back being a scout or better yet just pack and go. Scaroni also needs to go. We need a younger charismatic & capable president not that old fart.
Well last season a lot of good teams like Napoli, Juve, Fiorentina were under reconstruction. So it should be noted that the league was far less competative then this season.
You could say exactly the same thing about the league when Milan won the scudetto in ’22.
Inter lost Conte, Lukaku, Hakimi, Ericksen.
Juventus was plummeting and lost Cristiano Ronaldo.
Atalanta had a change of generation. Moving on from Ilicic and Papu Gomez.
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Napoli was however still pretty strong (they were first place at some point) and Lazio wasn’t as bad as they were since 2023/24.
Overall if we compare the seasons since 2020/21, I’d say the least competitive was 2023/24 and the most competitive was 2022/23 (despite Napoli steam rolled it) since 3 serie A teams made it to quarter finals.
We had a better team then too. And none of the teams were as bad as last year.
just 5 words pioli is better than fontrash
There hasn’t been any real palpable progress under Fonseca. And add to the mix a suppressed Leao and defensive liabilities. What you get is A different version of Pioli without any visible improvement in any one area aside from beating Inter. And even that seems more of a fluke with Inter’s form rather than our own doing at this point …
Which all seems par for the course given management decided to appoint Fonseca.
rubbish comments, cos we can all say milan s also under construction this season that’s why teams like Napoli is on top of the league table.
i might agree a bit with federico, pioli would have done better with this current team than what mr Funclown is doing
Are there any articles (that I have missed) on Fonseca’s views on the defensive game. It’s shocking that four months later he doesn’t seem to solve any problem we had last season. Maybe, and that’s a big maybe, we are slighlty more compact, defending the dead-ball situations, but then there’s the Liverpool game. Actually, even then Fonseca blamed the players for not following his instructions.
Pioli is a football genius for this guy. 20 years in management, he got a chance at some pretty good clubs and he managed not to win a title with Porto. And he was fired from most of the jobs he had. 😀 Top manager, 100%.
We couldn’t go for the guy from Sporting? Why would we, he only brought a weaker team in Portugal to the title, beat the giants. Milan wants to spend less on transfer market, spend less on wages and spend less on manager wages. 5th place mentality.
For me this is all down to Cardinale. He thinks he is smarter and can change the way traditional winning football works. 1st he got rid of Maldini and replaced them with yes men. Then he sold Tonali who was going to be the heart of the midfield for years to come (center backs and Midfielders are the heart of the team and need to be stable) so he could purchase or “moneyball”a bunch of bang average players. Then they retained Pioli who did well but the team needed an upgrade and they went for another average manager who has no history of winning on the cheap. Until or if they ever realized that you need quality to win the scudetto or a CL we will continue to languish in the bottom half of the top ten. Cardinale is doing what is best for Redbird and building up the value of the club by increasing revenue and trying to build a stadium. He can say whatever he wants but he doesn’t care about winning and his actions show it. We are doomed and will be stuck in mediocrity until this scumbag leaves. #Cardinaleout. Sempre Noi…