A report has revealed some more information on the team meeting that took place in the build-up to the derby between AC Milan and Inter on Sunday night, one which could have provided a turning point.
La Gazzetta dello Sport recall the words of Fonseca, who revealed that a meeting had taken place involving him and the squad: “We talked a lot on Wednesday, almost an hour and a half.” With that, he made it clear to Milan fans that for him that was the key moment, in the best week of 2024.
It was a face-to-face discussion lasting 90 minutes, but what did Fonseca and the players say to each other for an hour and a half? What happened at Milanello for Milan to transform? It is impossible to know everything without being in the room, but some things have emerged.
Fonseca and the players in those 90 minutes talked a lot about tactics, less about emotions. Fonseca’s staff prepared clips from previous matches to establish the fundamental concepts, with a strong underlying idea: to also and above all show successful plays, correct movements and solutions.
The message was clear: we are not the team in difficulty that everyone sees from the outside. Of course, everyone at Milanello was aware of having made a lot of mistakes – the clips with the errors obviously existed – but they also knew that Milan are a strong team.
Fonseca said that, from that day on, he saw a different group. Wednesday’s training began immediately after the meeting and gave good feelings. On Saturday in the press conference when Fonseca claimed that he had seen ‘three fantastic days’ of training he wasn’t lying, he was convinced.
We need to wait at least for the Lecce-Leverkusen-Fiorentina trio of games to see if these good signs will continue. The images of the derby however send a clear message: the team has remained with Fonseca and they fought hard for a brilliant result.
Matteo Gabbia was the hero and he chose a very strong phrase on Sunday evening: “Until the last day we have, we will follow Fonseca until death”. He could have expressed closeness in many ways, he chose the most decisive one.
Meanwhile, Alvaro Morata – when Gabbia headed in the winner – turned and hugged his coach, not his team-mates. Emerson Royal, a short distance away, did the same. A coach who has lost the group does not experience something like this.
Third: Fonseca wasn’t nervous after the victory against Inter. There was nothing in his words that suggested he saved his job or that there was revenge against doubters, and this means he remains very much composed and under control.
Above all, Milan fans can be optimistic considering that Fonseca only had the full team (or almost) for a few training sessions. Morata and Pavlovic trained for the first time at Milanello only on August 10.
Fofana was made official on the day of the first match of the season and, up until that moment, he had trained alone: he started at 50-60% and is still not at his best today. Abraham was signed on deadline day and almost all the big names were away for two weeks with the national teams in mid-September.
There was little time to work, and so it makes sense to go back to a quote from Vasco Matos, a coach in the Portuguese Liga and a former player underf Fonseca, who said in the summer: “Paulo always needs two months to get his concepts across.” We’re almost there.