AC Milan were hoping to begin the new season with three points against Torino, but they ended up having to battle back from two goals behind to earn a draw.
As this morning’s edition of La Gazzetta dello Sport (via MilanNews) writes, Paulo Fonseca’s new era began with a 2-2 draw against Paolo Vanoli’s Torino and it was a game that brought Milan back down to earth after the USA friendlies.
As Lucio Dalla sang, ‘America is far away, on the other side of the moon’, and this applies to the Rossoneri who went from convincing victories against teams like Manchester City, Real Madrid and Barcelona, to a game against the Granata where they can feel fortunate to have got one point.
In the 90+ minutes yesterday we saw a two-faced Milan; one with Alvaro Morata on the pitch and the other without. The paper states that the difference was ‘abysmal’, given that with the Spaniard on the pitch the Rossoneri found an outlet through a real playmaker that was not in the starting XI.
The problem is that Morata doesn’t have match fitness yet and is not even ready to play a full half, which is why Fonseca found himself forced to mix up the line-up by starting Luka Jovic up front instead.
Alexis Saelemaekers got the nod at left-back because Theo Hernandez is also far from 100%. What the game taught us is that those solutions which gave good signs in the preseason victories might not be as convincing now competitive football has begun.