Paulo Fonseca now has one AC Milan training session under his belt with preparations for the 2024/25 season now underway at Milanello.
As highlighted by La Gazzetta dello Sport, it was a very quiet training session as the ultras did not make the trip to support the team. There were still around 300 fans present at the session but they did not create much noise. The ultras are currently protesting against the ownership and their perceived lack of ambition.
The coach was tactically very involved from the beginning, often stopping the game in question to try and explain new ideas to the players.
The whole session lasted just over an hour and was perhaps a little more physically intense than some expected, meaning the players present were really put through their paces.
It became very clear that Fonseca wants all of his players to understand the tactics and the passing lines inside out, and he will stop sessions as much as he feels is necessary.
For the history books, Davide Calabria scored the first goal in training under Fonseca. He is a player that Milan want to see more of after what was an underwhelming 2023/24 campaign for the Italian who has little pressure on his position.
I really don’t understand why Calabria gets so much negativity in press. Underwhelming campaign? For most players and for the club itself it was underwhelming season. Calabria was solid defensively against quite good players like Kvara/Mbappe. Is he a top player? Not even close like other 20 guys in our squad. and I don’t understand why on earth we are trying to get other players to replace him. If we want to upgrade we should pay and get someone who’s actually better – not Royal, but even that’s unreasonable: we have a decent player on position and have a back ups, while other positions need a massive upgrade so that should be priority.
We can’t measure players on 2-3 top performances. We have to look at the consistent level, on which Calabria is just under par. Too often he is the weakest link in defense. He is an old fashioned full back and it’s a problem. He is not strong enough or fast enough for the modern game at that position