Paulo Fonseca’s introduction to life at AC Milan hasn’t been without problems, and the Portuguese head coach has only recently had questions asked about his future. Today, Billy Costacurta took a deeper look at the situation, and his handling of the squad.
Throughout the international break, Fonseca’s position seemed to be slipping out of his hands with each passing day. However, the management reaffirmed their faith in the head coach, and he returned from the international break with three points against Udinese.
With his confidence in the squad growing, and his braveness increasing, the Portuguese may have been given a third chance – after the credit from the Inter game quickly ran out after poor following results. Ultimately it is a chance he must take, and with this, he is being bolder with his selections.
Today, Milan legend Costacurta spoke to Sky about his Fonseca’s current position and his words have been relayed by Football Italia.
“I think it’s something difficult to overcome, Fonseca wanted to make his voice heard, first with words and then with the formation. The team’s response was good. The players have to understand this, especially those who stayed out. Those who replaced Leao, played better than Leao.”
“Why are we talking about Leao? Because we expect a lot. Isn’t Motta doing the same thing with Douglas Luiz? We always talk about talent, but talent has to be broken down into five or six criteria. What is Leao’s talent? He is in the top ten players for physicality and pace. That’s good. But what about shots on target and assists? Is he in the top 100? I don’t think so.
“Is he in the top 150 for leadership ability? I don’t think so. The message sent by Fofana is different. Is he talented? No, but he has an extraordinary talent for leading the team by example, which is probably even more important than technical talent.”
I agree with Leao comment but saying Fofana isnt talented is beyond stupid. So what? Just because player isnt a foward and doesnt contribute with goals automaticly means that he is not talented? So far he is on pair with kessie. And imagine saying kessie isnt talented a few years ago
Agree
I think the point was that he isn’t THAT talented. And he makes it up (and more) with his mentality.
Stop dis nonsense talk… Fofana is not talented simply means he is not exceptional… Costacuta didnt say dis to ridicule d player… He also acknowledged dat he was a hard worker
This is ridiculous, you can say that Leao is not a goalscorer but saying that he doesn’t create chances is just stupid. I would suggest Costacurta to randomly pick 3 games from last season and find one where Leao didn’t create a goalscoring chance. And to count how many did Giroud miss. Realistically Leao will never be a goalscorer, but you can say this for many wingers. Example Jeremy Doku, he won’t score 20 goals ever. He probably won’t even have 20 G+A in 1 season, yet is he a top player and useful? Yes, he creates spaces, chances etc.
Costacurta has always told the truth about Leao, he has never been very high on him, but it looks like he is just about done with him now.
This guy sounds like a complete fool. First off saying that Fofana isn’t talented is ridiculous and an insult.
Saying Okafor played better than Leao is also dumb. What did Okafor do that leao doesn’t always do? He used his pace to beat defenders 1v1 down the left side. Had a couple weak shot attempts and got a hockey assist on the goal. Everyone acting like he’s Ronaldo now. He played better than Leao at his worst, but nowhere close to Leao at his best.
I would not exactly refer to a Milan legend as this guy and a complete fool in the same breath. He probably knows something about giving 100% and die with his soccer boots on for this jersey given his pedigree. After all this teams history was build on players like these. He has a right to demand some effort from our current crop.
Y’all judge players according to what they can do at certain moments in a match.
Billy judges them overall, physically, technically, mentally.
Leao has the physical and technical gifts, but mentally he’s no better than Terracciano, I would agree with him.
Fofana doesn’t have Leao’s technical gifts, but physically he’s gifted, and mentally he’s a beast.
Costacurta spoke no lies.
Agree Ryan and players should indeed be judged on various parameters rather than just a few in regard of g/a assists contribution.
I think Leao potentially has so much more to offer but not sure he really will reach his full potential hence why we demand a lot from him.
I always thaught Costacurta to be on the more critical yet rational camp but this time he took no prisoneers.
How one agrees or disagrees with him depends on how you rate talent or what is the minimum required for one to be considered talented.
Leao, Fofana even Messias, Castillejo,… are from an elite who made it to the professional football and are/were playing in a top 5-10 league in the world. That alone makes them among the 99th percentile (or 1% elite) among the people who ever tried to pursue a career in football and hence talented.
On the other hand, Costacurta played alongside the likes of Van Basten, Maldini, Baresi, Rijkaard, Gullit, Savicevic, Desailly, B.Laudrup, Baggio, Weah, Shevchenko, Kakà, Seedorf, Davids, Pirlo and Rui Costa to name only those and against the likes of Maradona, M.Laudrup, Platini, Zico, Zidane, Batistuta, Del Piero, Totti, Ronaldo and Romario again to name only those. I don’t think it’s outrageous to claim that all of them are more talented than Leao and Fofana by a landslide.
Although I’m not really sure when he says that Leao is outside of the top 100 in shooting and creating. I don’t think one can name a 100 player who are currently active and are right now better than Leao in those 2 departments, but maybe I’m wrong. He is definetly outside of the top 150 in leadership ability because he has simply 0 leadership ability.
How were all of the players that Costacurta played alongside (including as a 41 year old left back) SO much more talented?
Was it something in the water?
Was it the fact that defenders were actually allowed to tackle?
Was it the fact that the game was slower?
Was it the fact that players played together for more than 5 mins?
It’s one thing arbitrarily rating current players but once you move across generations it really becomes quite fanciful.
But one thing we do know is that the great sides were all built around a core of players who had played tougher for years.
The great Milan, Juve, Barca, Real, Bayern, Man Utd sides were all built around a core.
Some of the players who played in those illustrious sides were hardly the types of players who set the world alight.
Nicky Butt.
Pujol.
Bonucci.
Ambrosini
Whatever cross-generational comparisons you want to make those players are playing in the second divisions these days.
Another feature of the great sides was players that complimented each other.
They had midfields with tacklers and passers, sitters and runners.
When Man Utd won the treble their 4 strikers could all be on the pitch at the same time because they had different, complimentary characteristics:
Sheringham could drop deep
Yorke could play as a second striker
Solskjær was a super sub who could also play out wide
Cole was a fox in the box
That is the magic formula.
You take any one of those players out of the side and put them in another and the system stops working and they don’t produce the same magic for their new side.
This is why it’s so hard to find the magic formula.
It’s not just about money. There’s as many examples of clubs who have spent a fortune with little or no success.
Man Utd since Ferguson
Chelsea most of the time
MILAN
We’ve spent over a billion on thousands of players in the past 10 years with one Scudetto to show for it.
And that money was spent on the misunderstanding that some new signingS were going to somehow be the key to returning Milan to greatness.
A new signing (singular) might but multiple new signings (plural) was always just a scattergun approach which undermined coherence.
Look at our team on the weekend. Maignan and Thiaw were the only starters who’d been at the club for more than a season.
At the rate we’re going alienating our players,
Maignan could well be our last remaining player from the Scudetto winning side.
It must be some kind of record for dismantling a title winning side.
And I’d expect Costacurta of all people to appreciate the importance of this. If Costacurta was starting today he’d struggle to make it in Serie B having been loaned multiple times before he turned 20.
What’s this one saying? That a complete Legend of the club sounds like a complete fool. Guess who’s the fool here.
Sometimes if you speak less it’s better, because you loose the respect by speaking too much.
The way Leao has been used until now was to stay wide and carry the ball in final third and put it Infront of goal to let striker and AMF score the goal.
In some big matches, when he played centrally he scored and we won too. But how often did he play near to the goal?
Being an ex player should speak better than this.
It’s bullsh*t to say Fofana have no talent, he can never be anywhere near French national team if he is have any less talent to be desired.
Fofana is not talented? That is ridiculous. Has Costacurta even watched the game? Fofana was the best player on the pitch (Puli was a close second).
As for Okafor being better than Leão, sorry, but no. He isn’t. Yeah, Okafor had a good game against Udinese. Yeah, Leão is irregular but when he is at his best, he is miles ahead of Okafor.
Depends on how each defines talented I guess.
On his day, once every other month he have a moment of brillance while there is zero contribution otherwise. You need to take in to account all the negative to not just when he is “good”. But I like what I have seen from Fofana, improving game by game and looks to have a solid head on his shoulders.
“Zero contribution” is just what haters like you keep saying, but Rafa actually almost invariably creates scoring opportunities for his companions, even in games when he overall doesn’t play well. If they converted most of the opportunities he provides to them, Rafa would have a huge assist stat. Not to forget, Puli himself has said that he often plays with more liberty and therefore can do more, because markers are busy double-marking Rafa to prevent his bursts of speed that cut through defenses like hot knife in butter.
I do know about his negatives, but I think he is who and what he is, and the positives outweigh the negatives. No, he doesn’t have a great work rate like Puli and Alvaro and even Chuk. No, he most definitely doesn’t defend well and doesn’t track back well. No, his shooting is not always accurate. Still, warts and all, he consistently produces about 30 goal participations at season end, and that’s been the case for the last 3 seasons (always best or at least second best for this among all Milan players; how on Earth is this called “zero contributions”??? Unbelievable!), and I bet it will be the case again for this season too (so far, he’s got 5 although he played fewer minutes than most of the other starting forwards).
What you haters don’t understand is that the very reason why we have Rafa and can count on his about 30 goal participations per season, is that he isn’t perfect. A player with Rafa’s exact talents who also tracked back well, defended well, and had a bigger work rate, would NOT be playing for us. He’d be playing for the likes of ManCity, PSG, or Real Madrid, teams that are much richer than we are and can afford that kind of player. If Rafa were the perfect player you haters keep dreaming of and anything short of it you bash him, he would never even have reached us. He would have been snatched much sooner by the rich teams when he was still with Sporting or Lille.
Count your blessings. Rafa is who he is and we are lucky to have him. We wouldn’t even have won the Scudetto without his MVP performance throughout that year (and for this I’ll always be grateful to him), and if we sell him like you haters want, mark my words: we’ll be worse off. With our cheap management, who do you think we’d be able to buy, who would continue to provide 30 goal participations to us??? Mention some realistic player, not some pipe dream. You know that our management won’t pay more than 20 to 25M for a player, and no player in the market who produces 30 goal participations per season costs that little.
This is pretty easy to understand, but surprisingly. most people here don’t. We have a few posters who do understand it, like ACM1899. Fortunately our administrators do seem to understand it, which is why they slapped his contract with a huge release clause, and which is why when other teams tried to get him, the answer was “he’s not for sale.”
But the “fans” here, oh my God, they keep insisting that Rafa should be sold. That’s incredibly short-sighed.
No, I don’t think that Rafa will ever progress to being a true world-class left winger. I think he will continue to provide decent seasons for us, with about 30 goal participations per season, and then will decline, and will enjoy his life doing some of the things he likes to do outside of football. But until he truly declines or leaves Milan, I’ll enjoy his 30 goal contributions per season and will feel grateful that we have him.
He’s never been close to 30 goal participations.
Are you talking about Leao? He’s averaged 30 goal contributions in all competitions the last 2 seasons and was the best player in Serie A when we won the scudetto.
COuld he be better? Yes. Sometimes his decision making is not the best, but to say he doesn’t contribute is just objectively false. He creates a ton of chances for this team.
I get more frustrated by his decision making sometimes more than his effort tracking back. How much does any great offensive player spend tracking back on defense? Ronaldinho, Messi, Ronaldo, Mbappe, Ibra…
Calling Leao a great player and then mentioning actual great players like Ronaldinho, Messi, Ronaldo, Mbappe and Zlatan to make a point is wild.
How much does any great offensive player spend tracking back on defense?
Go watch Pulisic and his work rate vs Udinese and you will understand why Billy is dogging Leao. Over a 100 minutes running and defending, on top of actually being involved in the goal scored.
About Leao being the best player in serie A when Milan won the scudetto.
Leao, that season had 11 goals 10 assists in serie A.
Domenico Berardi, a player who plays the same role for a bottom half of the table team like Sassuolo had 15 goals 17 assists that season.
Leao in his career in all competitions has never had that many goals contributions in one season. Berardi did all that just in serie A.
Leao was never the best player in any league.
“I get more frustrated by his decision making sometimes more than his effort tracking back. How much does any great offensive player spend tracking back on defense? Ronaldinho, Messi, Ronaldo, Mbappe, Ibra…”
Well football right now is a bit different than it was back then, although a forward who doesn’t help defending is considered a bit of a liability unless his contribution going forward is so immense that it overshadows his lack of defensive duties.
Aside from Ibrahimovic, all the players you’ve named were at some point THE best player in the world, all of them were inside the top 10 in the Ballon d’or for a good portion of their primes and all of them in their primes contributed to more than 30 goals per season (in case of Messi and Ronaldo, they scored and assisted so much that it doesn’t make sense and in case of Ibrahimovic and Ronaldinho they did so in a tougher era in terms of offensive stats). A player like Messi (if there’s any) who can receive the ball anywhere and being surrounded by 3 players and yet manage somehow to contribute to a shot or a goal has more than enough justification for not tracking back.
Leao is not even close to those achievments. He was once nominated in the ballon d’or getting 2 votes then was never nominated again.
IMO Leao didn’t contribute to 30 goals because he is so talented in shooting and passing (as Alessandro puts it) he contributed to 30 goals DESPITE his shooting being subpar and his passing being so innacurate. In 2023/24: Haaland, Foden, Wirtz, Martinez, Kane, Mbappe, Vinicius, Salah, Palmer, Guirassy, Openda, Dovbyk, Watkins,… had more goal contributions that him. Heck Frimpong is a wing-back and isn’t far from him (14 goals and 12 assists last season). 30 goals isn’t that much of a milestone anymore.
OK, so 30 goals isn’t much of a milestone anymore, right? Please tell me what other Milan player is able to do that and is not called Christian Pulisic or Rafael Leão. You can’t find any? That’s because there isn’t any. Giroud was able to do it but he is no longer with us. No other Milan player comes even close. By the way, almost no other non-Milan Serie A player is able to do it either, who is not called Lautaro Martinez. Rafa has about the same goal contribution as Lautaro Martinez. Somehow I don’t see Inter fans screaming that Lautaro should be sold and criticizing him regardless of what he does for the team.
So, maybe in your book that’s not much of a milestone, but try to imagine how many points Milan would have had in the Scudetto season without Rafa’s 28 goal contributions, many of which were winning goals that secured 3 more points. I hope you do know that we only won the Scudetto by a hair, only slightly ahead of Inter in points. Take away Rafa’s contributions and we wouldn’t even have qualified for the next CL that season, much less, won the Scudetto. Remember, Rafa was elected Serie A MVP that season. He was actually the player MOST responsible for the Scudetto, and I’ll always be grateful to him for that (unlike you haters).
And then, pray tell, if we sell Rafa like you all want, what other left winger would our cheap management buy, given their policy of not spending more than 20M to 25M on any individual player, who would be able to add 30 goal contributions to Milan’s tally? Don’t mention pipe dreams that we can’t afford. Mention please another left winger we could actually realistically sign and would fall within the price our managers are willing to pay, who would add 30 goals. Nobody? You can’t think of any? Because, see, players who do that don’t cost just 20M to 25M.
See how we’d be worse off if we sold Rafa?
So, your big argument is that Leão is not as good as Messi? LOL. Duh, no, he isn’t. Nobody is. Maybe Pele and Maradona but those are dead. Still, Rafa even though he “is not even close to those [Messi’s] achievements” (true) is a very fundamental player for Milan and I’m glad to have him.
Now, the Rafa scapegoating has become so unreasonable, that poor Rafa is being bashed because he is not as good as Messi, which is true of ALL professional players in this entire vast planet.
If that’s what you expect of Rafa, then yes, you’ll be disappointed. Me, I expect that he’ll continue to provide Milan with about 30 goal participations per season, and that’s pretty good in my book.
Yes, exactly. Actually, not just the last two seasons but rather the last 3 seasons (he had 28 to 30 goal participations in all 3 of the last 3 seasons).
Yes, I’ve said several times, if Rafa doesn’t track back but keeps producing 30 seasonal goals for us, he’ll have done his part, because he is a forward, not a midfielder or defender. Yes, it’s nice when wingers also track back and the most complete players do, but if Rafa were good at this too, he’d have been snatched by richer teams and wouldn’t be playing for us.
A poster here who is a true Rafa hater has reacted negatively when you mentioned Ronaldinho, Messi, Ronaldo, Mbappé, and Ibra in the same post with Leão. But I understood perfectly what you meant. No, Rafa is not as good as those players and never pretended to be, and I don’t think you meant it this way either, but yes, even the greatest forwards rarely tracked back, and they weren’t criticized for not tracking back like all these Leão haters do.
The Leão scapegoating now is so automatic, that I spotted some hater bashing him for the difficulties we had against Parma… when Rafa didn’t even play!!! It’s becoming this bad! Even when he is not playing, he’s being scapegoated! It’s crazy! That poster probably didn’t even watch the game, didn’t know that Rafa had not played, and came here just to gratuitously criticize Rafa, regardless of any reality base. Also, I’ve seen posters bashing Rafa even in games when he scored one and assisted for another one; the excuse in this case was that “he just got lucky.” Nothing that Rafa does will ever be sufficient for these haters. It’s like trying to argue with conspiracy theorists.
People say Rafa is my idol and I spend too much time defending him, with long posts. One, yes, I’m verbose and most of my posts are very long but this has nothing to do with Rafa. I post long posts on other topics too, not just on Rafa. Two, no, Rafa is not my favorite Milan player. Pulisic is, and my Milan jersey has Puli’s name and number, not Rafa’s. Three, I currently don’t speak much about Puli because he’s not being scapegoated so there is no need to defend him. I defend Rafa because he is the one being unreasonably persecuted here.
When people complained of Puli, saying that he disappears in big games (well, he took care of this in the Derby and against Liverpool this season) and when the official Sempremilan rater here kept always rating Puli poorly and saying “he could have done more” even when Puli had scored or assisted, yes, I defended Puli.
But lately people really can’t attack Puli any longer with his phenomenal production for the team, so now they focus on attacking Leão, which is why I spend time defending the latter.
We shouldn’t be fooled by it. Had Puli’s numbers been less good this season, the usual anti-American haters would be bashing him too. Remember when they said Puli was signed just for merchandise sales and because the owner is American? LOL. Puli rapidly turned into MIlan’s best player.
So criticism of certain Milan players has nothing to do with reality and all to do with prejudices.
Hey, I do criticize Emerson and Terracciano. But they are OBJECTIVELY bad. I’m not against criticizing a Milan player when the player is truly bad. Like, who wouldn’t criticize Origi? This is not the case for Puli or for Rafa, though.
“Well football right now is a bit different than it was back then, although a forward who doesn’t help defending is considered a bit of a liability”
This is true but in my opinion it’s also a part of the problem with the game today and why the “beautiful game” is not as beautiful as it used to be.
This doesn’t necessarily apply specifically to Leao but overall in the game. Too much obsession about how much a player runs in a game and expecting everyone on the pitch to do everything as if they are robots with endless amounts of stamina. This also contributes to the amount of injuries we see in the game, but more importantly the lack of creativity and skill. They care more about how much and how fast a player can run than how much skill and creativity he has. You end up with with great athletes but not necessarily great footballers. That’s why we don’t see anyone doing the things Ronaldinho used to do, or Messi. Coaches don’t want those type of players anymore, they want big fast strong robots that run constantly and do exactly as they are told. Most of the great offensive players were great partly because they knew how to conserve their energy for when they had opportunities to attack. Players have limited amount of energy to expend, it’s a question of how much energy do you want your best offensive player to spend on defense vs offense. I would prefer my best offensive players to spend most of their energy attacking, so they are not half out of breath when we get a chance to hit on the counter. Obviously some players are going to have to do both, and some more than others but I think in the game right now there s too much asking defenders to attack and too much asking attacker to defend.
Wow, what a great post! You nailed it! Let’s just think of Pulisic. He gets exhausted. He needs to track back a lot to cover for our poor right backs (Calabria has been a disaster and Emerson is just bad). And by the way, even though Puli tries hard, he is not very good at defending, and is often beaten by the forward he tracked back to combat.
Our problem at Milan is not currently a lack of goals scored, but rather the number of goals conceded. We’d be better off upgrading our RB position (instead of downgrading it by hiring Emerson Royal) and providing a decent deputy for Theo in the LB position (Terracciano is not it), and a true leader for the CB position (after Kjaer was gone, the other guys there have struggled) rather than trying to make of Rafa a player he is not, that is, a left winger who is also good at defending.
Sometimes I wonder: Pulisic has scored several goals plus a couple of assists this season, despite having been forced to track back a lot due to our poor right backs. Can you imagine how many more Pulisic could be scoring if we had a competent RB so that Puli could focus more on his offensive duties?
I wish fans AND MOST IMPORTANTLY Fonseca would leave Rafa alone, and allow him to be his usual self: a talented left winger who can score and assist especially if he isn’t bothered with being told to do something he is not good at, that is, defending and tracking back.
Rafa has been trying. There is no doubt that he has been tracking back more and even tackling for balls. But paradoxically, he is producing less offensively because of it.
I find it incredible how Rafa is misunderstood by these haters. They don’t want to allow him to just be good at what he’s good at. They want him to be a different player, a system player who performs other tasks too, and he is not that. We are ruining him. At one point he’ll be too frustrated with the unfair criticism and scapegoating, and will ask to leave, and then we’ll be worse off without him.