Stefano Pioli chose to entrust Yacine Adli with a deeper midfield role against Atalanta, and the response that he got was a very positive one.
As La Gazzetta dello Sport write, it seems in the build-up to Milan-Atalanta that Ismael Bennacer and Tijjani Reijnders must play in the midfield, because Yunus Musah and Adli don’t have the defensive ability to contain a team capable of scoring 24 goals in the previous nine games.
The first error in judgement on the front was that Pioli didn’t have a 4-2-3-1 in mind as his system, but a 4-1-4-1. The second was that the one man trusted to play in front of the defence was not Bennacer, but Adli.
The coach amazed everyone, but above all he amazed Gasperini with a game system that defused the Nerazzurri goal machine. Bennacer and Loftus-Cheek played their part too, but Adli was brilliant in holding Koopmeiners’ back and thus shutting down one of Atalanta’s primary attacking sources.
Among the great things about Adli there is intellectual honesty and an evident signs of content in the concepts he expresses. There is zero banality, zero rhetoric and sometimes zero filter.
“I was disappointed in Monza because I had a terrible match, I wanted to show that I belong to Milan and that I can play here,” he said after the Atalanta game.
It’s one of the reasons why Yacine is generally well regarded by Milan fans, that and the fact he quickly became a super Rossoneri fan. One who sings the choruses of the Curva, one who invites the whole team to his house because at Milan he is living his professional dream and proves it with facts.
He got on with things without complaining when he wasn’t playing, and the hard work being the scenes is why Yacine went from 138 minutes last season (over six appearances) to the current 1,234 (22 appearances).
The big question that revolved around him for a long time was his position on the pitch. At Bordeaux he actually played in the attacking midfield, or at least as an advanced midfielder. At Milan there were already players in that role, so he had to either change or leave.
Just when the latter seemed the most obvious solution – as was honestly said to him by Pioli – Adli told his coach only one thing: keep me and I will do everything to be useful to you in a way different from what I am used to.
Pioli saw something to work on also in a defensive sense, he knew that the tactical side of his Milan 2023-24 would change and he kept Adli. There will be other difficult and ugly matches to come, but in the meantime the midfield has very much shown he has a place.
