Rafael Leao is set to be named among the substitutes this evening against Slovan Bratislava, and the AC Milan star is the only ‘big one’ to be missing.
There are several occasions this season where things have seemed odd at Milan. From the cooling break incident to the general direction of the club. However, the most intriguing situation has probably been Paulo Fonseca’s handling of Leao.
The Portuguese winger has spent more time sidelined than anyone else of the club’s stars, and he is expected to be on the bench once again this evening for the game against Slovan Bratislava, causing Gazzetta dello Sport to look into the situation.
As the paper writes, there was talk by Fonseca about rotation, and realistically Leao is the only player to be moved without reasoning – which has been the case on several occasions this season. A case made more interesting by the Portuguese’s refusal to rotate any of the other stars regularly.
You spoke about rotation, can this also concern a player like Leao? Or do you think Leao needs to play right now?
“I honestly don’t know, let’s see tomorrow. Rafa is an important player in our team, he’s really in a good moment. But I have confidence in everyone: if Rafa doesn’t play then someone else will play. We want so much to win here: it’s not that he will play a team not to win, he will play a team to win. There is the possibility that Leao won’t be there as well as that he will be there. Abraham will play.”
Against Juventus, yes, Leao was not at his best, but the same can be said for a handful of his other teammates, a selection of the other stars.
The decision comes at a time when the club must be a unit, and even though he received a knock in the game against the Bianconeri, he should have recovered.
How is this a “big one”? It’s a game they should win, probably the easiest of the Champions League matches. WHat is wrong with resting Leao and also getting some other players like Okafor, Tammy and Chuku some important minutes to keep them sharp?
No matter what he does people will complain about it. This is what happens when you just have to keep creating content and putting out 10 articles every day. You get nonsense like this. How about fewer articles, better quality.
They are all ”big” in Europe
Excessive rotation. No stability for a CB duo. Lack of respect for the opponents, when we know that we often have more trouble beating the supposedly weak ones. There is a risk of dropped points when you rotate 7 players. So, we’ll see. Maybe we will beat them anyway given that they seem to be the weakest of all Champions League teams, but if we don’t, it will be on Fonseca.
U tivilize this team right ,bet milan will most luckily get a draw ,with this squad milan will be so less impressive …fomseca is not a coach for a team like milan
He is going to chase Leao out of the club – big mistake!
I don’t see an issue. This is the game to rest Leao. We need him for Empoli.
Picking up points in Serie A should be the priority.
He played against juve wtf plus they have too much games to play meaning if he puts the same formation the players will probably going to be injured in some part of the season