Koni De Winter’s start to life with AC Milan has not been easy, but it may be showing signs of a turnaround after Friday’s performance.
When arriving as the direct replacement for Malick Thiaw, many were confused as to why Milan may have downgraded. Especially considering he did not arrive with another reinforcement. So, after a few shaky performances, those doubts become solidified.
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However, Massimiliano Allegri has continued to show faith in the youngster, despite his rocky start to life.
De Winter’s rise
As MilanNews suggests, the move for De Winter seemed slightly questionable as a primary back-up. He is not exactly the mould of defender that was lacking at the back in terms of experience, so questions were certainly fair.
Then, after his poor performance against Napoli, those queries were only heightened further. However, he has not been beaten by them. Against Verona, he was solid and this continued to be the case for the game against Cagliari on Friday.
Providing a ‘noteworthy performance’, he has certainly shown a different side to himself. In the midst of a defensive scare, De Winter has provided a bit of solidity, which was potentially not expected from the youngster.
Nevertheless, he must be allowed to grow. Look at Matteo Gabbia, for example. He originally needed a bit of time to settle and then took off. Maybe the same fate awaits the Belgian; patience must be given to him.
Let’s hope so. He had several troubling and disastrous performances that contributed to points dropped; then he had one decent game followed by one good game. Consistency is key, especially in such an important position as center back, whose failures can result in conceded goals.
It’s encouraging that his last two games were good; but even notoriously weak players like Emerson Royal can have the occasional good game, so for me the jury on De Winter is still out. We’ll see.
He’s young; I hope he learns and improves more. Certain skills like positional awareness can be learned. He has an available mentor for that: Gabbia is extremely good at positioning and could teach De Winter. A lot of De Winter’s failures came out of being out of position and leaving big gaps for the opponents, something that fortunately he did not do last game, so there is hope.
He’s adapting faster to our team than Pavlovic did, who had a complicated first season with us. Now Pavlovic is excelling.
Give him time. And of course he actually does need to play more.
De Winter already knows the serie A pretty well, Unlike Pavlović who came from a much weaker league.
Now De Winter’s best performances so far came against teams which aren’t much of a threat offensively, but he was still the best defender, so kuddos to him.
Also nice to see that the Napoli disaster didn’t impact his morale negatively.
I think the whole team was switched off for that game. And was really focusing more on the league. The key thing is while it’s against weaker opposition, he’s growing quickly in confidence.
Pavlovic impressed me more in the first season than De Winter has done yet and his ceiling seems far higher in my view. I only arrived for the Cagliari match around the 70th minute but Pavlovic showcased many rather great interventions last year even if he also had some disasterous ones as well.
It’s the same player, just with more game time under his belt. Patience can go a long way (hint to Milan management)
Let the coach coach. Allegri improves players.