AC Milan head coach Stefano Pioli deserves criticism for the way that he lined the team up for the derby against Inter yesterday, a journalist has claimed.
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Milan made it seven games without a win and lost further ground in the top four race as they were beaten without scoring by their city rivals Inter for the second time in less than three weeks, this time by a 1-0 scoreline and not 3-0.
The Rossoneri did not manage a single shot on target during the entire 90 minutes which is a bad enough statistic, but the first half in particular was worrying as a rather bold 3-5-2 tactic from Pioli – one that did not include Rafael Leao – backfired massively allowing Inter to dominate, score and eventually win.
Pietro Mazzara wrote about the game and more specifically about the first half attitude from Pioli’s side in his weekly column for MilanNews.
“A first half to limit the damage, but where you lost the game, with a Cremonese attitude. This is the photograph of the 45 minutes of the derby, where Stefano Pioli parked the bus in front of goal, with the usual drafts entering through the windows and which only a revived Tatarusanu blocked when he was able,” he began.
“On Lautaro Martinez’s goal, exactly like last week with Berardi, the usual, unacceptable and never corrected chronic inattention at the near post. A zonal marking where you go ‘I go, the man is mine, no, he’s yours’ and the Nerazzurri’s 10 makes it 1-0.
“That is enough to make individual and collective crumble further. Which at least this time has not slumped, but now it makes no difference. Between coinciding 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 it really makes no difference. Because Milan haven’t won for seven games and have fallen into an unacceptable mediocrity from a technical-mental point of view that is unacceptable if you wear these colours and have the Scudetto on your chest.
“A Milan that has been sent, by everyone’s choices, into the ‘parameters’ of mediocrity, unable to make additional funds available on the winter market to improve the team or to find, as a technical area, something better than what was signed in the summer.
“By now it is clear that apart from a few cameos from Thiaw, who will now be invoked by the people as the new progenitor of the defence (probably rightly given Kjaer’s conditions and performance), the rest of the summer market is now a total flop.”
