Alessandro Costacurta has accused the AC Milan defence of making ‘elementary’ mistakes, and urged the head coach to settle on a centre-back pairing.
The management and Paulo Fonseca must be worried seeing the ease with which the team concedes goals, with another three let in against a Cagliari side on Saturday that had scored nine in 11 league games previously.
By now it seems all the opponents that the Rossoneri face know to target the right wing and then put the ball into the middle, as the nine goals conceded that way shows. In seven of 15 games across all competitions, Milan have conceded two or more goals.
Costacurta spoke to Sky defensive problems of a Milan side who have conceded 20 goals in 15 games this season. His analysis was relayed by MilanPress.
“The problem is that the things that are happening now are consistent with those of last year. Maybe there was more balance, but the individual errors were the same and this is what surprises me: there are errors that pass from one coach to another,” he said.
“So I ask myself: will they work enough? I think so. Why aren’t they improving? Are they positioning themselves badly? These seem like elementary things to me.
“I believe that Milan can improve in defence. They will work and therefore improve, also with the understanding. I’d play Gabbia and then I’d play another one that I change. Pavlovic has the greatest potential to be better together with Gabbia.”
Pavlovic is suffering from lack of communication and constant rotations don’t help… although he is really raw, needs to mature a bit and work on his pass recives
Gabbia just class
Thiaw and Tomori I think will fight-out for the 3rd spot and if one of them just completely fails, I wouldn’t mind getting a replacement… maybe Scalvini?!
Scalvini after a Cruciate ligament tear.
No Thanks. Keith 🇲🇹
People recover from ACLs all the time. He’ll be on fire next season.
Agree, Papa. ACL reconstruction/surgery is no where near as invasive as it used to be and the success rates are much higher for athletes to return to their pre-injury levels.
People who demonize ACL tears are still living in the Dark Ages.
Scalvini is just 21yrs old. He can still recover. If Nesta recovered from a season long injury at 34 why not Scalvini
Gabbia class? Haha why, because he scored in the Derby? The guy is average like the rest of them. We have no class CBs apart from maybe Thiaw at his best.
Thuram said Hello for Thiaw
Gabbia’s injury was unfortunately timed, but once he’s back we’ve got to settle on a pairing and let them play together uninterrupted. No two players on the pitch need to be more aligned than your centre backs – the preferred two should play 90% of the time.
I agree – Gab and Pav.
Certainly Gabbia should be the constant and have some rotation with the other depending on whether we need speed or height etc.
At this moment I would rank our CB’s…
1. Gabbia
2. Thiaw
3. Tomori
4. Pavlovic
That sounds about correct for ranking. Pavlovic has been very disappointing, he seems completely lost at times.
Agreed 100%
Pavlo?
lol
The center back who just casually forgets to jump in a corner when the ball is literally above his head?
Costacurta has lost his mind completely lately.
Lol tomori was by far out best CB and gabbia was better pair for right CB.
Tomori made some mistakes but he have better qualities and performed better than others against real, inter, Bayern Leverkusen.
Pavlovic is always shaky in atleast some part every match. He cannot start matches, should be allowed only from bench in this season atleast. What he has is only space.
Might get some flack for this but I actually don’t think Theo was as much at fault for the third goal as people make it out to seem. I think it was just a really really good shot. Tomori and Musah defended that right side as best they could (Tomori could be argued was out of position but thats for another day). Musah challenged the cross and closed the player down short of an actual block. Even the cross itself was blinder. Now the positioning of Theo can be argued to be initially is off (that’s the part where I think the blame COULD be aimed) but he readjusted upon realizing this. Imo, he was actually well positioned as the center of the box were 3 Cagliari players for two center backs (remember Tomori tracked a player run). So Theo actually does a good thing here by tucking in. The problem is he actually gets no help from Okafor who is kogging back. Theo now has to defend two players instead of one. Theo’s challenge on the shot was actually quite good….arms in, closed down the angle. The thing was that the shot was actually an incredible shot. Top right hand corner on the narrowest of angles. Tough shot, brilliant goal. I think ppl tend to lay out the frustration on the “nearest” player equal at fault but you gotta look at the strike and the overall play.
Now the other goals however that’s more player error that anything especially the second (even the first was more an issue of near post players not doing their jobs clearing the ball). The Fofana mess up was just frustrating. But also frustrating is to see him alone being stretched in midfield trying to mop up on either side of him. I think it would do good to have Musah help out. Deers can still play midfield but just slightly further to exploit his strengths. Even if he’s better coming from deep in you can still play Musah as the roaming guy like vs Real. But whatever we do, just add more defence to the midfield. Why regular fans see this and not management is beyond me.
Pavlovic is such a massive disappointment. Kalulu was better. It probably goes back to there being no leadership. No Kjaer, especially.
Kalulu is good but not great. Like all Milan’s defenders, sometimes he makes silly mistake. At Juventus he continues to do so. Last year his growth is very limited and now he is 24, he is no longer a youth player and unlikely to improve a lot more. Selling Kalulu for around 18m and use the money to get a younger Pavlovic is reasonable
How is it reasonable to sell a good RB and replace him with Emerson Royal? Don’t be ridiculous.
The first person to be discarded in milan is fonseca ,he is a coach for the mid table teams ,give this current milan squad to a proven coach like conte and see them silent seria a ,fonseca and those that brought him in are clueless ,our defenders are good in their own ways ,we just need a proper pairing and all of them can function
Gabbia & Tomori
Milan should sell Tomori,Abraham,Calabria and Emerson Royal,and then get their replacement(upgrade). Scalvini for Tomori,Jonathan David for Abraham,Woyo Coulibaly for Calabria/Emerson Royal. Get additional game changer like Tijjani Reijnders in
the midfield and then we’re good to go.
With coach like Fonseca? No we are not good to go