AC Milan will take on Cagliari in their penultimate home game of the season tomorrow night and some rather interesting team news has emerged.
According to the latest from Gianluca Di Marzio on his website PazziDiFanta, Milan should take the field with a 4-3-3 system that will start with Marco Sportiello still in goal, considering that Mike Maignan is not yet 100% and might only be by the European Championship.
Pierre Kalulu and Alessandro Florenzi will act on the defensive flanks, while Matteo Gabbia and Malick Thiaw will play in the centre. Yunus Musah, Tijjani Reijnders and Ismael Bennacer are set to start in a midfield three. The attacking trident will probably consist of Christian Pulisic, Samuel Chukwueze and Olivier Giroud.
Theo Hernandez, Fikayo Tomori and Davide Calabria should start from the bench by technical choice, while Rafael Leao is not in the best shape and Noah Okafor will most likely miss the game as he may not even be on the bench due to an injury.
Ruben Loftus-Cheek and Simon Kjaer will not recover in time for the game against the Sardinians either.
Predicted Milan XI (4-2-3-1): Sportiello; Kalulu, Gabbia, Thiaw, Florenzi; Musah, Bennacer; Chukwueze, Reijnders, Pulisic; Giroud.
Reijnders at the 10! Curious how that looks. Can we get oK4 some minutes though? Puli doesn’t need a break?
Not sure why we waited 35 games to make these changes. And not sure why Giroud keeps starting….
This is the reason why Milan lost its place everywhere what is giroud always Doing in the line up I keep wondering all the time when we have young player on the Bench a 35yrs old over them is totally insane well maybe pioli is hiding something we don’t know
It’s literally mentioned at the end that Okafor likely won’t make it due to injury.
On the other hand, interesting to see Pulisic at LW and Chukwu at RW. On paper its a quite strong line up. The main concern for me is Kalulu RB after last bad game as RWB (would rather see how Terraciano play there from start) and why Giroud still start. Why not try Jovic if he already back from injury?
One thing for sure is, we need some young players to play from the bench if they don’t start. Players like Zeroli, Camarda, Simic, Terraciano, Bartesaghi.
At last reijnders got his position
Good not to see Rafa there. It’s actually a good lineup.
No, it’s not. No lineup with Giroud still starting is good, as it is equivalent to us playing with only ten men, and not having a striker (hard to win in these circumstances).
Pioli is being incredibly stupid and stubborn, always starting Giroud who has thoroughly checked out and has been no good for several games. Yes, he scored last game but otherwise had a horrible game, missing a sitter and spoiling several of our attacks; I think that even with his score, the balance was negative (we probably would have won that game with Okafor or Jovic from the beginning). A traffic cone would have been more effective.
I think the whole set of Milan supporters can see that Giroud has been garbage for several games; apparently the only guy who can’t see it is Pioli.
And then, there is just no point in starting this late in the season a guy that not only has been worse than a traffic cone, but won’t be with us next season. So, why not give to the guys who WILL be with us next season, more minutes so that they integrate better with the team and so, for example, that management can further evaluate if we should renew Jovic’s contract (I think we should)?
I love Giroud and wish him all the best in Los Angeles, but at this point he is dead weight. He should just have 10 minutes in the Salernitana game to say good buy to the fans; not a single minute more.
I agree about playing someone else other than Giroud, not that he’s that bad but because the minutes will benefit other players we can count on for the future better. But like some comments here have emphasized on another article a couple of days ago – Pioli probably doesn’t give a damn about our future anymore and it’s understandable for a guy on his way out.
Theo Rafa Tomori were terrible last time out so nice doing Pioli. Only if he was courageous enough to be making similar decisions since.
People complaining about Pioli playing Giroud are more interested in blaming Pioli than understanding the choice.
Giroud might be old and thinking of LA, but I’d still take him over Jovic, especially in a lone-striker module.
Okafor is semi-injured so he cannot play from the start.
IMO Cagliari is very likely to defend deep and neither Jovic nor Okafor would be good as lone strikers in that type of game (more of a counter-attack or two striker formation)
Don’t blame Pioli for starting Giroud, blame management that didn’t give us any good alternatives… if Jovic has performed as good as he has, the first that should be praised is Pioli.
Then again, some fans would find always something to blame… they’d blame Pioli if he starts Jovic and the team loses … heck they’d probably blame even Ancelotti for not starting the game with a proper striker against Bayern
So true.
It’ll be interesting to see if the moaning confines into next season.
I’ll obviously complain all summer about all of the transfers but once the season starts I’ll support the team.
The strange thing is that the people who spent last summer in bliss and then moaned all season. It’s almost as if they enjoy the transfer market over actual football.