AC Milan were unable to get Paulo Fonseca his first win as head coach on Saturday evening as they limped to a 2-1 defeat against Parma.
The home side took the lead within two minutes as Dennis Man was on hand to tap home a teasing cross by Emanuele Valeri, but Milan thought that they were back in business when Christian Pulisic equalised from close range.
The Rossoneri were pushing for a winning goal but got caught at the other end when Pontus Almqvist squared for Matteo Cancellieri who put the hosts 2-1 up, and that would be enough to earn them the three points.
It means that Milan are stuck on one point after two games and have not made an ideal start to the 2024-25 season, especially with Lazio and Inter to come in the next three games. While waiting for those games, check out bitcoin casino.
The stats from the game are particularly worrying. With just one point in two matches, Milan have registered their worst start to the season since the 2011-12 season, when they also claimed just one point from the first two games.
While that season ended up being quite good after all as they team fought for the title and only lost out due to the controversial game against Juventus at San Siro (you know, that Sulley Muntari moment), there isn’t a lot of optimism this time around.
The defence looks as shaky as it did last season under Stefano Pioli when the Rossoneri allowed 49 goals in the league and 69 across all competitions. The press is disorganised, the attack are wasting chances and there are even questions about the effort levels of certain players.
Thus, Fonseca finding a cure for this in just one week seems almost impossible. Back in 2011-12, Milan drew their third game before and it remains to be seen if this can be matched – or perhaps even beaten – on Saturday next week.
Several players performed poorly, but one of the worst was certainly Theo Hernandez as he failed to track back properly on the goals. Coincidentally, he was also 9km/h slower than the goalscorer on both goals despite being one of the fastest players in the league.
Looking at the replays from the game, it’s evident that he was simply lazy and didn’t do what was required to help out his teammates. We saw this especially on the second goal, as he jogged back and then put out his arms once the ball had crossed the lines.
