Given that AC Milan’s game against Bologna today has been postponed, there will be more talk about Rafael Leao’s current moment.
As La Gazzetta dello Sport report, there is no ‘Leao saga’ in the eyes of the club. Paulo Fonseca repeated it for the umpteenth time after the match against Club Brugge: “With Leao there is no specific problem, the substitution is not a punishment but a tactical move. Rafa must see the substitution as normal and work to be able to help the team like everyone else.”
The crucial part of his words is the penultimate sentence: seeing the substitution as normal. Here the debate among the Rossoneri fans starts, this year more divisive than ever between those who want to be patient with the winger and those who are starting to imagine the team without him.
Leao and Fonseca are compatriots, but the feeling – at the end of October, therefore absolutely fluid and subject to revision – is that neither of them is solid beyond any reasonable doubt. The balance between the coach and the undisputed star of the team is ‘becoming increasingly delicate’.
Fonseca has gone for a different method to Stefano Pioli in order to get him to try and raise the bar, which the paper likes to ‘shock therapy’. He wants to understand how receptive and willing the player is to work and improve.
At 25 years old the time has come for Leao to stop alternating between sensational performances and listless ones, especially with the No.10 shirt on his back and the highest salary in the squad.
Fonseca wants Leao to think about Milan before himself, and he wants to see him apply himself a lot in the non-possession phase. There are times when he has done it, others – like against Brugge – when it hasn’t happened.
The time when the coach would go to visit Leao at the Portuguese national team’s retreat at the European Championship is long gone. It seemed like the beginning of a journey and a virtuous relationship, but four months later things are a bit different.
Leao silencing the fans in Parma, spending the cooling break on the sidelines against Lazio, getting jeered by San Siro, being left out of the starting XI and not celebrating with the team under the Curva Sud have all generated headlines.
There is certainly room to mend things, as Zlatan Ibrahimovic suggested before the game: “They are adults, they must take their responsibilities and that is what they are doing. Fonseca must be himself, he is the coach and certain issues must be resolved from within.”
It is almost obligatory that they find harmony, before we reach the point of no return. As games pass, Leao could be destined to sit on the bench more and the discomfort would increase. What is the point of collapse? The mercato.
Fonseca was shaky in the first part of the season, but now he is more stable. Leao’s path between now and May can take any direction, but everyone’s work is directed toward a single goal: to arrive at June with the problem solved.
We win when he go out,for me that is enough. I want winning even play with kids. If we win when he play than ok,but for now Fonseca is couch and have right do this,we win
The team plays better without him. Leao lacks effort and discipline to play for the team. He just wants to sit idle on the wing and wait for his teammates to give him the ball so that he can run at defenders.
That’s not working anymore because teams now have a gameplan to contain him. It’s no different from how teams now have a plan to contain Kvaratskhelia. So now Kvaratskhelia has to play a bit different for the team.
Leao also has not improved since Milan won the scudetto. Therefore it is better for Milan to sell him next summer as he is declining and his bad attitude suggests that he will not change his way of playing.
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His dribbling worked against club brugge and could work in the UCL and other competitions other than serie a, but his finishing is just not good now. He could practice as playing as a CF so he can have better finishing
To me Fonseca is a very bad and average coach, Milan’s play lack cohesion and fluid movement. There is no chemistry in Milan play currently, only some individual brilliance and luck that is sustaining the team
I don’t know why this s been a huge issue. A football team needs points. For that you fill the players that perform better or – precisely in Milans case – players that make the team function better to earn the points. Wearing the no10, getting paid more and being called the star guy doesn’t matter here, performance on the pitch do (oh and good attitude.. don’t fùcken walk away from your teammates). Whether a certain player understands and accepts this ,again, doesn’t matter for as long as it’s been clearly put across the whole team. Foremost you abide by rules or go.