AC Milan head coach Paulo Fonseca was full of praise for his side after the 3-1 victory against Real Madrid at the Santiago Bernabeu tonight.
Milan pulled off what many would consider to be a shock result at the home of the European champions, scoring three times and running out winners against Real Madrid.
The first goal of the game went to Malick Thiaw as he headed in a Christian Pulisic corner from close range, then Vinicius Junior’s penalty looked to have righted the ship for Los Blancos.
However, Milan came roaring back and took a deserved lead before the break when Alvaro Morata buried a rebound from a saved Rafael Leao shot.
In the second half, Tijjani Reijnders got his third goal of his Champions League campaign as he collected a cut-back from Rafael Leao and finished with a low drive from a few yards out.
Fonseca spoke to Sky immediately after the full-time whistle to try and analyse what was a memorable night not just for Milan as a club but for him as a coach. MilanNews relayed his comments.
Was this a performance full of pride?
“I think we won because the players had the courage to come here and not be afraid of anything, trying to play our game. We prepared the game to have the ball, in the first half we did really important things.
“In the second half we suffered more but together and we totally deserved this victory, not only for the 3 goals but because we played with great great quality.”
Do you want to change the way people think about Italian football?
“I don’t agree when people talk about Italian football like that, but we too can be a team in Europe with more initiative and control of the game. Today we proved here that an Italian team doesn’t just defend: we know how to play with the ball, we’ve done great things positionally.
“The team knows how to move the ball well with patience. We need to have the patience to grow, we still need to grow a lot.”
It felt like the substitutions caused the team’s level to drop…
“Abraham is a player with other characteristics: Morata connects in the second moment of play, Abraham doesn’t have this characteristic. We lost possession of the ball. They are players with different characteristics.
“Abraham is not a support player and plays further forward, but Alvaro was very tired: a player who works well defensively and helps the team. We were also in a moment of greater pressure from Real, we can’t forget that Madrid changed many results in the final minutes, like Dortmund.
“Maybe in the players’ heads there is also this image of Real and we lost the ability to control the game with the ball, the quality with our exits. But I think that the players who tried to continue with this result.”
Is this a Milan reborn after a bad performance in Monza, given they were compact and creative for 90 minutes unexpectedly?
“This match, for a team that wants to control with the ball, is a match in which we have more space: they are not matches like in Italy. You don’t understand outside of Italy how complicated it is in Italy: Monza plays man to man, Cagliari man to man.
“European teams are having difficulty: it’s a scenario that doesn’t exist in other leagues. It’s more difficult playing in Italy, the matches with Monza and Cagliari are more difficult. It’s difficult to have good matches against teams that play man to man.”
Good good job, Milan❤️🖤
Milan have no problem playing against teams that play football, even though they lost to Napoli, expansive football wise they were better, it is only against the teams that get men behind the ball, similar to those who play the low block.
This is what Fonseca and the team need to work on if we want any semblance of success. The teams in seria A, will now be even more defensive against us,.
On a positive note Tijani is ascending to the next level, Fofana is establishing his pattern of play and has become defensively astute and his judgement has improved significantly.
Musah was the utility player we needed, I have always wanted Milan to stick to flat 3 man midfield, with Tijani being the one to break through the lines, the flat 3 gives us balance in attack and defence, Musah although assigned to the right, did his best play moving centrally with Pulisic pushing to the right.
I think we can build on this but we need to spend 50m on a striker and it’s got to be Osimen or Gokyeres.
Welcome guys.
Fonseca just proves beating Madrid in the preseason wasn’t a fluke or luck. His tactics outplayed them again today.
ForzaMilan🖤♥️
Musah does not lose champions league games (ok fine he lost 1 to PSG, but that’s in 5 starts?
Agree. Team seems much more connected with Musah. He should continue to play in d-mid. Much more fun to watch, too.
Yes agree with him as his kind of football will be more suitable if we find opponents that have a more attacking approach. The real homework is how to adapt the system towards the most of Seria A matches.
Finally following Deschamps strategy by letting Theo (the Gazelle) run wild.
I think the free flowing passes and the players expressing and enjoying themselves freely on the pitch is the key to this victory.
I feel this system can be adopted going forward but it will limit Pulisic; well the coach knows better
i think real is struggling atm and that was the key to the victory. They got no balance at all.
Still im not taking anything from our guys. they played a hell of a game and won deservedly.
Struggling or not, they’re still by FAR stonger than the remaining teams we have to play (Red Star Belgrade, Slovan Bratislava, Girona and Dinamo Zagreb).
On paper, with now 6 points, we have no reasons NOT to finish the league with 18 points.
I hope this is Milan rebirthing and not just another isolated case.