There are those who believes, perhaps rightly so, that Theo Hernandez has lost some of his spark this season. However, he is being asked to play his role (and others) in a different way.
As La Gazzetta dello Sport write in their analysis, the common thread that ties Theo build-up play are the touches, i.e. the time spent with the ball between his feet and his head up looking for ways to advance the play.
He can play centrally, limit runs and support Simon Kjaer in marking, but still keep track of the game, for example against Sassuolo he touched the ball 91 times and made 78 key passes. Only Tijjani Reijnders did better, with 108 and 88 respectively in the same entries.
Before this year he had never played as a centre-back, but in the moment of maximum emergency – with Kjaer, Thiaw and Kalulu out of the picture – he knocked on the door of Pioli’s office and told him he was willing to step in.
So far he hasn’t disappointed. Theo has played as a central defender against Newcastle, Frosinone, Atalanta and Sassuolo, but the way he builds play hasn’t changed.
When it comes to keeping control of the game, the Frenchman becomes the ‘spare man’ on the left in a ‘3+2’ setup, with the two full-backs in midfield and the playmaker between the two centre-backs (most of the time Reijnders, the only one to have played all the matches).
Against Frosinone, for example, the Frenchman created a couple of opportunities by freeing Alessandro Florenzi with a long ball or a through ball. By playing centrally he has to watch his positioning and his surges forward are less frequent, naturally.
For example, against Sassuolo he only touched the ball in the opponent’s half of the field 15 times out of 91 because when playing in the middle he has to be much more careful in managing the ball, and in fact in the last match he didn’t lose the ball even once.
He didn’t receive a yellow card in his games at centre-back and he has played seven matches in a row for ninety minutes. After a start to the season with five yellows in the first eight games, he limited the fouls. Milan have arguably lost incisiveness on the left, because he and Leao complement each other.
Leao hasn’t scored in the league for more than three months – since netting the winner against Verona on 23 September – while Theo has scored just twice and the last was against Fiorentina on November 25 with a penalty kick.
Ultimately it’s a question of keeping balance during an emergency, and ideally without changing anything in the build-up phase. This has been achieved, but at the expense of incisiveness, goals, assists and old habits.
