Ahead of AC Milan’s clash against Lecce, Paulo Fonseca has spoken to the media about the work being done to get Rafael Leao back to his best, and the doubts in place over Alvaro Morata’s condition.
The picture has changed at Milan, courtesy of the result against Inter last weekend. A result that arrived because of Paulo Fonseca’s bravery and his ability to unite the group to fight for one another.
Last weekend, Fonseca was hosting his last press conference before his probable sacking, today, he hosts one that, perhaps, signifies the true start of his Rossoneri tenure, with a squad that are willing to sacrifice themselves for the sake of the team.
Of course, the errors of the season’s opening will not be forgotten. However, the Portuguese coach has the tools to make his squad work, and with his players now showing their willingness to commit to his ideas, the road forward may be a positive one.
This afternoon, Fonseca spoke to the media about the doubts for the game against Lecce and Milan’s possible psychological block, and his words have been relayed by Milan News.
How important is it now to give continuity by exploiting the good feeling you have created?
“This next game is very very important. We have to confirm that we are growing. I think the derby win makes sense if we win with Lecce and confirm that we have improved. We have to make up points.
“This is important to have motivation tomorrow. It’s a dangerous game after the derby, when you win important games afterwards it’s more difficult. But we cannot make a mistake, we must win.”
Did the team suffer a mental block?
“I don’t want to go back to the derby. The game was over when I left the stadium. At this moment the mental part is very important, maybe more important than technique and tactics. Matches are emotional, being well-balanced, energetic and motivated is very important.”
Now three matches await before the break, including one in the Champions League. Is your idea to keep the same formation?
“We want to have continuity, and to have continuity we want to play the same team. We have doubt about Morata for tomorrow, a contusion caused him bursitis. We have this doubt, let’s see tomorrow.”
Does Leao have the right motivation?
“We are also working a lot individually with Rafa, also defensively. He’s working well defensively, he’s pressing, he’s coming back. He can do better but he’s growing defensively. We were a team defending, Rafa included.
“He had three opportunities to be decisive in the derby, I don’t think he can’t be a defensive player at the same time. For me he’s doing a good job, he’s playing as a team and that’s the most important thing right now.”
What has Tammy Abraham’s impact been?
“Abraham has an infectious energy which is important for me. Having players like Abraham and Morata who bring ambition and energy to the team, even in training… He works for the team.”
Without Morata will we come back with a midfielder in his place?
“Jovic is not a striker with characteristics to do this. Without Morata it will be Loftus or Reijnders to do this role.”
You have never hidden that it takes a lot of work to play the football you want. Where are we today?
“Percentage-wise I don’t know, but we are far away. Defensively I don’t think the team has grown that much. We are closer to what I think the team can do. I think we have grown, although defensively I would have liked to have seen other things. Offensively we have to grow a lot. We have the qualities to do it, we are improving, but we can grow.”
Was the derby victory a sign in view of the Scudetto?
“It’s been a long time since Milan won a derby, it brings confidence and another atmosphere in the team. I’m like that, I always try to be balanced. A game can obviously help the players with confidence, but it’s just one game.
“If we don’t win tomorrow then we go backwards. We have to forget the derby, just concentrate on the next game which is the most important. The atmosphere is positive and that’s important, but it’s also important to realise that the derby is in the past and doesn’t matter anymore.
“It was important but the future is more important. On the Scudetto I keep saying what I said on the first day: at Milan, we have to think about the Scudetto, we cannot think about anything else.”
Were you surprised that before the derby you were considered on the verge of being sacked and after the game you are considered a genius?
“We Latinos are like that. I have been in an environment that was like that: if we win we are the best, if we lose…. I don’t want to say that word (laughs). I have done the same as I have done in recent weeks.
“Sometimes when we don’t do well we don’t want to read anything, but when we win it’s different: but for me I didn’t change anything, I didn’t read anything.
“We have to keep working, keep learning, keep improving: that’s the most important thing for me. One day when I was in Portugal I went out with my son, he was 12 years old. He told me the fans were angry with me: I told him they were angry that day, and the next day they would applaud.
“This is what football is, emotion, moments of sadness and joy. To be a fan is to be this. It is not being balanced. I have to be the opposite, I am the coach and I have to be balanced.
“But I understand the irrationality of the fans’ love, I don’t have any negative feelings inside me for those who were not with me before and are with me now. I know that’s how it is.”
What is your idea of rotation?
“I like to do it, I have confidence in all the players. But we have to understand the moments and I think now is not the time to change too much, it’s the time to have continuity, to stabilise the team. In the future if we have chances I would like to do that, also because we have so many games.
“I think when we are a real team at all times it’s easy to change, you don’t feel anything. When we are not the team I think we can be it is more difficult to change: we are trying to be this type of team so then when we change you don’t notice anything.”
Are you still looking for a starting centre-back pairing?
“Right now in my head, I don’t have this worry about changing. Gabbia is playing because he deserves to play: he is one of the strongest at building out with the ball, but he is also a player who orients the team very well, the defensive line, the moment to shorten or slide.
“He has a very strong positional game, for me it is important to stabilise the defensive line at this moment, tomorrow Gabbia and Tomori will play to try to have this continuity. Then against Bayer, we’ll see.”
Is it more difficult to win a derby or to keep it going?
“The responsibility here is always the same. What is more difficult for me are the victories. I think it’s normal. The day before the match with Inter I knew the players were motivated, and mentally ready.
“What’s dangerous here is playing with Lecce. In the players’ heads, there is not the same difficulty as with Inter. But we have to make the players understand, the most difficult thing, is to make them understand that we have to play the same way.”
Is Morata in doubt for tomorrow?
“He has been called up, we’ll wait until tomorrow to see how he is but right now what I can say is that he is in doubt. I don’t know if we can use him tomorrow. I don’t want to take risks and lose him for more time. Let’s see tomorrow.”
So did you convince the players to stay alert for tomorrow as well, perhaps with something special?
“This week no barbecue, nothing special. We had a normal meeting.”
Is Fofana unique in terms of characteristics in the squad?
“We don’t have Bennacer now, he can play the same position. Musah also can play in this position. Fofana is a passing player, and Musah is a ball carrier. We need Musah to become like Fofana.”
Is Chukwueze suffering because of Pulisic’s form or does he need to grow into your footballing ideas?
“He had a very good pre-season when he had space against big teams. When we came here, against Torino and Lazio, I think Chukwu was not as good as in pre-season. It’s not a problem of quality but of confidence.
“He needs to gain confidence and play in this context: in Serie A he has no space, he has to make movements at the right time, he has little time to decide. He came on and did well against Inter, he has to grow in games maybe like tomorrow’s, without space. He must grow in this.”
Who comes close to Reijnders in terms of technical qualities?
“I think we all agree that Tijji is a unique player in our team, we have no other players with these characteristics. I just think about the next game, let’s see after that if one game we don’t have Tijji what we can do. But he’s a very important player in our team who is not easy to replace.”
Emerson Royal gave positive responses against Inter. Can he grow further?
“We can’t forget that he arrived late and didn’t have many defensive organisation training sessions with us. I think the biggest difficulties were defensive, here he can improve and I’m sure. Offensively he is a strong player, defensively he can improve.”
The hug with Morata after Gabbia’s goal…
“A normal moment, of joy, of euphoria.”
Pessoa wrote ‘The Devil’s Hour’. Do you want to be the second Portuguese to write it?
“He was a great Portuguese writer, but I haven’t read him. We study it at school. I don’t want to say what I think otherwise the Portuguese will kill me [laughs]. I like another kind of reading.”
Despite the match against Inter, you said you want to see Milan improve further, so how high can they go?
“When I say that the team has a lot to improve offensively I think about what Milan’s game should be. If we see the game against Inter what I looked at was that the team was very compact, not letting Inter play the game they normally do.
“We had the ball, but we didn’t have so many moments of organisation. But we had many moments of transition: we were getting the ball and going forward. I see great teams defending with a low block, and I think this is the context for Milan.
“This is where I think we have to improve, in our positional play: we have to dominate going forward, have the patience not to lose the ball. Milan are a team that needs to play more time in the offensive half of the pitch.
“We had the ball with Inter but we didn’t have so much connection in the first phase, the opportunities we had were almost all in offensive transition.”
That was an enjoyable read.
Clear and intelligent assessements on most topics.
I have to say that I like his ideas on the team and on football in general. Let’s just hope he’s able to implement them.
The positives:
– he has mentally archived the derby and seemingly realizes we have three very different games ahead of us before the international break;
– Matteo and Tomori will play again tomorrow, we need an actual CB paternership, constant rotations and random choices in this department would only worsen the defensive situation.
The negatives:
– maybe I’m nitpicking, but he seems way too relaxed and philosophical about the results-depending, varying reactions from fans, you need to be more ambitious when you’re coaching Milan;
– I hope he is saying the stuff about Leao being helpful in tracking back just to motivate the player, this is at best applicable to the first 15-20 minutes of the game, afterwards he simply regresses into a throw-in line bound left attacker who is barely jogging in the non-possession phase. Harsh or not, his only chance of improvement is if the coach and the leaders in the locker room get into his head.
Also, not a dig or Fonseca or anything, just an observation – I don’t think the strategy in the derby will work as well with RLC in place of Morata. Maybe the bigger issue is that we don’t have alternatives for Tammy and Morata. Okafor and Jovic simply do not have the same pressing and work rate qualities. I am curious to see whether we’ll return to the more offensive 4-2-3-1 with focus on possession and maybe RLC dropping deeper to help out Fofana and Tiji.
“– maybe I’m nitpicking, but he seems way too relaxed and philosophical about the results-depending, varying reactions from fans, you need to be more ambitious when you’re coaching Milan;”
To his credit though, he did say “On the Scudetto I keep saying what I said on the first day: at Milan, we have to think about the Scudetto, we cannot think about anything else.”
“– I hope he is saying the stuff about Leao being helpful in tracking back just to motivate the player, this is at best applicable to the first 15-20 minutes of the game, afterwards he simply regresses into a throw-in line bound left attacker who is barely jogging in the non-possession phase. Harsh or not, his only chance of improvement is if the coach and the leaders in the locker room get into his head.”
He did say he needs to do more, and I think the coach should be more protective of his players publicly anyways. He can beat Leao in the locker room for all I care, but with the media he needs to be supportive and constructive.
But that’s just my observation.
Fair enough. I just hope he has the right approach to Leao at Milanello. So far the signs haven’t been positive. He’s still missing sitter and he still refuses to do the dirty work when needed. Then there was the Lazio incident and his continious bad reactions to being subbed off which, honestly, I can’t remember happening during Pioli’s spell. I see people are defending him with the argument that he was passionate in the last minutes of the derby, but so was the whole team, it doesn’t necessarily mean him and Fonseca are on good terms. Let’s hope the derby fixes some of the issues in the locker room, our best players need to be on the same page with Fonseca, otherwise it will be a difficult for the whole group.
Passionate at the end of the game.
This is some proof that Leao is not a leader but needs a leader. Tammy leads that cheering section to put a finer point on it.
It’s okay leao is not a leader. We need to recognize it and manage to it is all.
Reading this (a very enjoyable read) it seems Fonseca has the insight to realize this and find the right focus of Leao’s talent.
I overall like what I read from him but I have my observations about this part:
“We had the ball, but we didn’t have so many moments of organisation. But we had many moments of transition: we were getting the ball and going forward. I see great teams defending with a low block, and I think this is the context for Milan. This is where I think we have to improve, in our positional play: we have to dominate going forward, have the patience not to lose the ball.
“Milan is a team that needs to play more time in the offensive half of the pitch. We had the ball with Inter but we didn’t have so much connection in the first phase, the opportunities we had were almost all in offensive transition.”
From what I understand, it seems he still wants Milan to play more of a possession type of football, but that he recognizes that it might not happen right away.
To each coach his style, but I don’t think you’re going to get a good possession style from these players, they are more suited for a low block and counter attacking style. I think he needs to be more flexible on that regard, or at least, maybe recognize that you can’t play the same football against every opponent.
Fofana, Tijj, Pulisic, Morata and Maignan are very good for the possession style, they pass and move well. Theo is versatile enough to adapt, Fonseca’s happy with Emerson in that regard too, Tammy is OK. What we will need is more passing CBs, CDM, number 10 and also Leao to step forward in his positional awareness
Just because a player moves and passes quickly in a counter attack (in a transition, like Fonseca said) doesn’t mean he can replicate that when all the opposition is in their own half or worse, their own third of the field.
Among the players you named, I think only Pulisic is well suited for either style. Morata has always played with teams that don’t like to keep the ball (Allegri’s Juventus, Simeone’s Atletico and Conte’s Chelsea). Fofana is more of a physical ball carrier, type of which you don’t really find in possession types of teams. Theo thrives when he has the space to run and dribble, for possession style, you need a fullback who can also work as an inverted fullback, which doesn’t suit Theo very well. For Tijjani, I’m so sure either, so far the derby has been his best game and he needs to be more creative and more dominant. Pavlovic was supposed to be our passing CB. Maybe they can all adapt to a possession type of game, but I think they’re better in a counter-attacking style of football.
100% agreed. That’s exactly the part of the interview that concerned me. Fonseca must be patient and adapt to the fact that currently, we are more suited to a low block and counters, than to a fast pressing-high team. We remain fragile defensively. I hope he can work individually with Emerson and improve his positioning (which failed in Inter’s goal). I hope he can work on Rafa’s mentality; if he can get Rafa to defend more and track back more, that will be huge.
Overall, though, I thought Fonseca has demonstrated in this interview that he is an intelligent coach. My respect for him has increased. I was too harsh on him in my previous numerous posts when I said he is mediocre. I think we all improved our opinion of Fonseca due to his bold choices and phenomenal victory in the Derby, when he clearly outcoached Inzaghi, something that is not easy to do. However, like Fonseca himself said, it’s just one game, and the continuation of the season will actually tell us if we can indeed fully trust Fonseca.