AC Milan got the win against Empoli at the Stadio Carlo Castellani on Saturday evening, and it came thanks to some brave decisions from Sergio Conceicao.
As Corriere della Sera (via MilanNews) report, Conceicao surprised everyone a bit yesterday afternoon when he fielded an almost defensive starting line-up for a game against a side that are in a relegation battle.
He chose to put both Rafael Leao and Christian Pulisic on the bench, who admittedly are not at their best from a condition point of view. He also resisted the idea of fielding Santi Gimenez from minute one, with Alex Jimenez and Yunus Musah as the wingers.
They were choices that, to put it bluntly, did not pay off, forcing the Portuguese coach to backtrack and do the only thing possible at half-time: bring on all three. It was perhaps an obvious decision, but a decisive one.
The paper talks about ‘magic changes’ for Milan and actually being able to instil a bit of fear in opponents who might have otherwise been experiencing a comfortably game. Being able to bring on players of Leao, Pulisic and Gimenez’s level at half-time is a luxury that not many teams have.
The Rossoneri change their attacking shape almost immediately and put Empoli on the ropes, with Pulisic taking centre stage thanks to his two assists. The first was for Leao who scored a rare header from a back post run; the second was for Gimenez who scored on his debut in Serie A.
What stood out more than the triple change at half-time was what Conceicao did after Fikayo Tomori’s red card early in the second half as he made no change of a defensive nature to compensate but they stayed with all the forwards on the field.
His explanation was clear in his post-match interview: “I took a risk, I wanted to win. Drawing with a club like Milan for me is like losing two points.” The second half was excellent but there is still a long way to go, especially if you consider that it is unlikely that the four musketeers – yesterday’s three key men plus Joao Felix – will be able to coexist from minute one without losing some balance.
I don’t think starting with a front 3 Jimenez-Abraham-Musah was a good choice to start with, he fixed the issue because that was definitely not working and putting a lot of pressure on our backline hence the red card… Kudos for turning the situation around but this should be a lesson for the Future
The starting frontline seemed to me like it was a front 3 of Jimenez, Abraham, Felix.
I didn’t see Musah getting forward much.