Paulo Fonseca has ended up in the crosshairs after AC Milan’s poor start to the season, but a journalist has claimed that an early sacking can be ruled out.
Milan drew 2-2 with Lazio away from home on Saturday night, which followed a 2-1 defeat in Parma and a 2-2 draw against Torino, meaning two points from three games to begin the new era.
Milan’s priority now is to use the break to calm things down, because when the games resume there will be a huge trio of games at San Siro with Venezia, Liverpool and Inter all within a week.
After those three games ‘Fonseca’s position will be evaluated’, as per Sky, even if at the moment there is ‘no desire or intention to change coach’. There will not be any knee-jerk reaction from the management, therefore.
The Corriere della Sera journalist Monica Colombo spoke to Calciomercato.it about the uncertainty surrounding Fonseca, and suggested that any notion of him being sacked soon is wide of the mark.
“The scene of Theo Hernandez and Leao on the sidelines during the cooling break against Lazio, from a visual point of view, was not very edifying: we must remember that for Theo it was the second benching of the season, so he had more reasons to disagree with Fonseca than Leao,” she said.
“Milan started the season in the worst possible way between results and image losses, but they have all the time to recover because the top is only five points away and upon the restart there is Venezia – last in the standings – before the debut in the Champions League against Liverpool and the big match with Inter.
“Fonseca has been put in the crosshairs of criticism: either the club strongly supports the coach as Berlusconi did with Sacchi, or the players are the first to follow the wind…
“It is no coincidence that yesterday the CEO Furlani went to speak with Abraham: a strong voice from the club was needed on the Theo-Leao affair, on Fonseca and on the absence of Ibrahimovic.
“Allegri or Sarri if Fonseca does poorly in the next three games? Absolutely not, I don’t see Milan putting a third coach on the payroll, one with such strong personalities that the club has shown to be allergic to. I completely rule it out.
“Given how Milan has moved so far, I think that before a change on the bench there will be a lot of time. I find it hard to believe that after four games Fonseca could be shelved and it’s even harder to think about Pioli returning, given how they parted.
“We had been told the fairy tale of an agreement for a friendly farewell to pay tribute against Salernitana at home and now it turns out that the agreement hasn’t been reached.”
Even though Fonseca was none of our choice for a coach he still deserves a fair chance.
He was appointed as a new coach during a summer where there were international tournaments like the Euro and Copa America, which meant that he’d be without most of his better players for bigger part of the summer.
Management brought in much needed reinforcements too late in the summer, a week before the season started.
He inherited a team from Pioli who left him with a defensive mess. A new coach can’t just snap his fingers and fix everything right away.
Look at Conte at Napoli. He is considered a great coach but Napoli played just as bad as Milan. First game badly outplayed by a Serie B team and are lucky to be thru in the Copa. Next they got smoked by Verona 3:0. They played well vs Bologna and then they got outplayed by Parma, the same team that beat Milan a week earlier. Parma was up 1-0 up until the 90th minute and played with 10 men when Napoli scored 2 goals to turn the game around.
Motta at Juventus inherited a great defensive team from Allegri, so he only had to work on the offensive part. Conte and Fonseca inherited a mess.
I don’t watch Napoli but there is the Serie A standings on the right and it seems that Napoli is 6th while Milan is 14th. Milan also has the most goals against (tie with Atalanta and Lecce). All of that playing against Torino at home, Parma and Lazio. And the standings don’t mention the drama with Théo and Leao. So it seems that Conte is doing way better right now than Fonseca.
Especially if you consider that Napoli was 10th last season and Milan 2nd. That’s a big statement of who is the better coach but there’s time so let’s see.
Please teke your pills regularly.
In case you didn’t notice, scoring winners on 90th minutes is really Conte-ism.
What’s the breaking point though? How much time does Fonseca get?
Does management give him the full season be it hell or high water? Are the players being told to shape up or ship out? Is there absolute trust in Fonseca?
So many questions and not very many answers thus far. I do hope that tactically Fonseca figures it out in a hurry because there doesn’t seem to be much progress so far.
Deserves at least until Christmas before judging, give him a chance to get these players into order and for the Euros players to find some form. Clearly brought in as a project coach and whilst we can’t ignore results we need to see a direction
There HAS to be complete trust in Fonseca, otherwise you do not fire a coach who landed the team second in the league.
The biggest reason why Fonseca won’t get sacked is money. They’re already paying for two coaches and cannot afford (at least they think so) to get a proper coach who would double the expenses. Anyone actually think Milan would be paying Pioli, Fonseca and e.g. Allegri at the same time? Spend 20M€ each year on 3 coaches? Never going to happen. The best they could do is promote Bonera or some waterboy to coach but that’s it.