The first game of the new Serie A season didn’t go as Davide Calabria would have hoped, to the extent that he left the field to boos during the second half.
As MilanNews recall, Calabria was substituted off during the 82nd minute of Milan’s first game of the season against Torino at San Siro, with Noah Okafor coming on to take his place, the man who would go on to score the equaliser 13 minutes later.
However, it wasn’t just a normal change as the captain left the field amidst heavy boos from the Milan fans present, as they evidently did not appreciate the performance from the full-back which was admittedly fluctuating.
The newspapers have given him a similarly hard time, starting with La Gazzetta dello Sport who rated his performance a 5 out of 10: “The first culprit on the Granata lead, certainly not the last. But that through ball from Sanabria must never pass… From then on he struggled to recover.”
Corriere dello Sport gave him a 5: “From his lane, Zapata paints the cross into the area that gives Torino the lead. He does well to head Lazaro. He leaves amidst boos.”
Tuttosport (5.5), added: “Starts off like a rocket, but then falls back and suffers the initiatives of Zapata and Lazaro. Replaced amid boos.”
It is a strange and difficult period for Calabria, who has seen a new signing arrive in Emerson Royal with whom he will compete for a starting spot, while his contract has just 10 months left to run and there are no suggestions a renewal is close.
I backed this dude for season after season but I’ve had it – so sick of him making average as* players look like freaking Kaka- like last night… why the hell’s he backing off? Wtf. Totally all at sea as usual, looking bamboozled, then puts his hands up complaining like it’s someone else’s fault. Bring in Royal at LB, Gabbia at CB over Thiaw and Bartesaghi over Salad at LB deputy – sheesh. And forget Kone – ideally we need another CB and LB.
*Royal at RB
In the future he’ll get one or two games where he’ll play good and people will forgive him again, you know since he’s an italian.
Imagine if he wasn’t an italian…
Welcome to the age of enlightenment. Calabria is very average at best, yet has been a starter for far longer than needed and is somehow still captaining this team… mind-blowing …
Finally you see the light lol.
Been saying this over and over for years. I like Calabria, he is a warrior, but he is not starting material nor should wear the captain’s armband. If he wasn’t Italian and a youth academy product he either would have been sold long ago or relegated to the bench. He offers nothing offensively and now seems his defense is suffering as well.
I’m not sure Emerson is the answer – BUT – hopefully it will be an upgrade (if he can learn to defend). Give Jimenez some minutes there e as well. Just not Terraccino – who is another player that should be loaned out or sold and is only there for the Italian quota.
Italian football and the Italian NT are at their lowest point in ages, with very few Italians playing at top teams. And even in the environment, being a captain of one of the top clubs in Italy, nobody ever considered Calabria for the national team. And it’s not by accident.
Calabria was so weak yesterday. It was painful to watch.
Actualy, it was Thiaw who sucked big time and as I always had an opinion on of: slow, clumsy, non-anticipating – sell as there are still someone who thinks he’s worthed to pay for.
Then, there is Saelemaekers, who lost so many duels against Bellanova, yet might be forgiven for not playing his nstural position (something we should blame our coach for).
Then I blame Jovic and RLC for not impacting the game at all, but still their mistakes did not hurt as much as Calabria’s.
And at the end, I always thought Calabria was an averige player, but not more or less then he performed yesterday.
There was a time when he was very strong against Napoli. LOL
I know but is not enough to make 1 good game per season
He did well in Napoli game but he often make mistakes in matches that get Milan punished
Royal will have his spot by the derby.
We don’t even know if he’s any good yet 🙂 Although being better than Calabria isn’t that tall of a task …
He’s certainly got better recovery speed. Taller and stronger. What remains to be seen is his offensive contribution.
I play better than calabria
Emerson is good player we didn’t have long time player like him i don’t know why so many people crying about him
Hopefully
Everyone saw since 2 seasons ago that we need another top RB like Theo on the left side, I hope Royal will do well but I highly dubt it
Calabria is a rb machine. its the rest who are lacking and then davide needs to clean up their mess and he fails 2 and gets blamed for all of it by idi0t “fans”
Exactly, same goes for our entire defense. It’s suddenly all their fault and fans will tear them apart but will look aways at our non-existent midfield because it’s “brand new”.
Speaking of our “new” midfield, Reijnders and Musah were involved with both goals yesterday. Musah looked amazing. A reminder that he is just 21….
after 4 yers of this is pretty evident that his way of defending is not working out for us yet here we are. New season same old defensive configuration, bit early to say this but, same old results
Delusional. He was not good yesterday and his overall performances for the last two seasons can be best described as mixed. What does our midfield have to do with Thiaw literally kicking the ball into his own net? Or no fullbacks picking up their #9 on the 6 yard box on a cross?
because those sitaution come when our mids drops the ball and our cb and fullb need to pickup slack while under pressure.
Thiaw was never in that situtation if the midfield did their foking job.
As for the zapata goal. If we are using zonal def that was down on thiaw to mark him. We most def arent using man marking. We should btw
But he was in that position. And instead of kicking the ball away from his goal, he kicked it into his goal. That’s unforgivable. ZERO positional awareness.
not true. go watch the replay of the whole action and you’ll see the blunders 4 players made that lead to the goal. Tomori was also at the post and the ball went past him. Thiaw at least kicked it (2 late but he did). Ruben let Sanabria run past him.
You mean on the first goal when he was casually strolling next to Zapata instead of actually pressuring him off the ball to prevent the cross?
that goal came because Tomori pressed high and lost his man, calabria was in 2vs1 situation, if he pressed Zapata the ball goes to Lazaro and he makes the cross. loss loss situation but ofc our main to blame guy gets the blame. no krunić to blame nowadays
ofc on the other side belanova was left alone. that can go down to our superstar saladmaker
You’re wrong mate. All our defensive line was bad yesterday, and indeed there was little defensive coverage from Benny and RLC, but Calabria is just not at the level we need. We need, at the very least, someone in the discussion to be best in the league. Calabria will never be there
look i dont mind an upgrade. its not gonna happen but i dont mind it. until then i’ll stand by calabria because i honestly believe he is a good player. not his fault he gets left out to hang again and again and again..
Good take … Krunic is gone Calabria is d next fall guy… Where was chukwussias who was supposed to help..where were d two DM… Since someone blamed Calabria, everyone tags along… Calabria is not excellent but he isn’t as bad as people here make him look .. we have bought conti, kalulu, Terraciano, dalot, ..yet none of Dem has displaced Calabria.. he is our captain..I stand by and with him
The captain is doing all he can do,i mean he is putting all his best, honestly the blame shouldn’t be on him alone,to be honest our DM have their own part of the blame.
I wonder why people booing Calabria as he most of the time average
Thiaw was awful again
Theo last night was awful again (on the defence)
Tomori is great and then he getting lost and we concede goals cause of him
Half of our players playing much worse then him…
Because Thiaw didn’t get substituted. If he did, the treatment would be the same.
Yet I read several members here said Milan fans never booed any of our players. Like lol, are you new?
Blaming Calabria is insane. There isn’t a single wing back in today’s game that is strong. The days of Cafu, maldini, lahm ect are gone! In todays game there isn’t a single defender than can be left alone ALL the time.
The wingers need to drop back and help them, the double pivot needs to be competent as well. When we had tonali, kessie and salesmakers, the team was more balanced and help was always available.
Also in both goals, our mids got cooked, especially reijnders who got ate up 2 times in the same sequence for the second goal, but that’s Calabrias fault… thiaw and tomori couldn’t mark a tank if they had to….Emerson royal is not going to be better than Calabria, and the Serb won’t be better than gabbia
Said something similar about defending. Didn’t see your post earlier. Wouldn’t have bothered posting mine.
“that through ball from Sanabria must never pass”, how could Calabria have stopped that pass? The pass actually looked to be aimed at the man Calabria was marking but he did well to stay away and let his man ran into offside, then the ball rolls out wide to another Torino player. In the second goal he was closing down his man – I think Ilic, when Saladman should’ve followed Lazaro in the middle but fails to do so. I really don’t understand how people think that any goals conceded must be blamed on defender or Midfielder. The attackers should be helping in defense just like how defenders are helping in attack. They should move as a unit. The fullbacks overlapping with the attackers also quickly dropping back to fill the gaps. I like Puli and think he’s one of the best team players but on the first goal conceded you could see him not dropping deep enough to follow the Torino guys out wide. I would take an upgrade at RB but it’s unfair to blame Calabria for just because a pass is coming from his side of the field even when he’s not directly close to the opponent crossing the ball.
He is a mid table team player… He needs ti be sold…
There’s no point in singling anyone out, because we can find a fault with anyone’s performance.
There’s still a lot of rust to be shaken off. The defensive phase needs to be ironed out WITH the presence of DM coverage.
Starters haven’t trained with the team as long as all the reservists. My guess is that’s why Fonseca didn’t start them (which I probably would have, then would have brought in the back ups). It was evident in the way Theo was playing.
I also thought there was quite a bit of confusion in the team trying to figure out when to press and when to back off – it wasn’t cohesive. So I’m guessing Fonseca’s system will take time to take to …
There’s work to be done …
It’s not crazy to look chiefly at a team’s defenders when easy goals are being scored. It’s not as if we were overrun in midfield and defenders were left in a 3v2 or similar situation. Whatever lead up to the first goal the reality is that Thiaw kicked it into his own net instead of clearing it. And on Zapata’s goal he was surrounded by 3 Milan defenders, only nine of them picked him up. Blaming a free header for the oppositions #9 on the 6 yard box on a DM is nonsense.
These takes (in the comments) on calabria are outrageous 🤣🤣🤣
Two goals scored by crosses from the right side given up by calabria being flat beat. I’m a fan of his be he’s clearly figured out. Last night was painful. There’s also two CBs who can’t mark, left Zapata wide open in the box. Which helps nothing.
The defending was terrible not because of a lack of cover from the mid-field but because, Theo, Thiaw and Tomori literal have the awareness of a child. Until Fonseca teaches these guy how to mark these soft goals will keep coming.
Thank you!!! People act as if our midfield was being overrun, leaving our defense outnumbered. Simply untrue. In both goals we had numbers in the box, but our CBs positional awareness is a hot mess. Especially Thiaw. He gave away points on several occasions last season and he’s picked up where he left off. He should be benched immediately.
On the buildup to the goals ,a few players who are not necessarily defenders didn’t help much in closing down the spaces but of course there’s no denial that the CBs, let me just say Thiaw, were at direct faults for not sticking on the strikers and also, well just simply scoring another himself. I like Thiaw and I won’t stop just now but he was awful last night. However the article is about Calabria and I didn’t see him doing much wrong on the goals.
Zapata is covering ilic by the corner, lazaro runs in and ilic makes a pass 2 him (salad was supposed to cover lazaro), lazaro makes tijani (who is marking him) look like a good and sends a cross to zapata (who got away form thiaw for the millionth time) and scores.
And ofc all this is on calabrias shoulders because for some reason people think he should be covering Ilic, Lazaro and Zapata at the same time.. and playing the gollie all while scoring and assisting in double digits up the field….
Calabria is covering Ilic.*
Look like a good = fool. Look like a fool.
Everyone blaming Thiaw… If you watch him closely, Tomori is always losing his position or man often leaving everything to Thiaw. He was doing this dirty mind games last season too.
I wanna see Thiaw playing without Tomori as a partner. This Tomori guy has a strange lil gurl behavior
I blame Thiaw for knowing cling the ball into his own net lol
Kicking the ball
Can he do better yes. Expecting him to just block every cross under the sun, and make up for two players when Salad and Thiaw are just losing their marks like their children in Walmart is absurd. You can criticize the final product, but you can’t blame him for thiaw constantly making the wrong decision, and the mids/wings not tracking back enough
I’m amazed Calabria has been able to hide this long.
He should have gone to TFener.