With Malick Thiaw’s injury against Borussia Dortmund, the injury situation is becoming increasingly complicated at AC Milan, especially in the defensive department.
As MilanNews report, Stefano Pioli will have only Fikayo Tomori available for the match against Frosinone on Saturday evening so Jan Carlo Simic should be called up from the Primavera to make his first Serie A start.
Below is the latest bulletin from the treatment room, including updates on Noah Okafor and Rafael Leao among others.
– Simon Kjaer: The Dane suffered a muscle injury he is struggling because it caused irritation which limits him in running. The problem has been identified and he is taking action to remove the discomfort that prevents him from working at certain intensities. It is very difficult for him to recover by Saturday, he is working to be back against Atalanta.
– Ismael Bennacer: He is training with the rest of the squad and has fully recovered. The coach will decide tomorrow whether to put him on the bench.
– Rafael Leao: Will have an MRI at the beginning of next week to understand if his injury has healed. If it has, his recovery work will move to the next step with the aim of rejoining group training
– Malick Thiaw: In ten days he will undergo a new MRI which will allow for more details on the extent of the lesion and the therapeutic approach.
– Noah Okafor: Continues his recovery program. He could start running on the field next week. He is working towards Milan-Monza.
– Pellegrino and Sportiello: Their recovery is progressing smoothly.
So now they have identified Kjaer’s problem… several weeks into it. This is seriously the worst medical and training staff I’ve ever seen in professional sports. It would be comical if it wasn’t destroying our season. This has been going on for years now and nothing changes. That alone is reason enough to sack Pioli.
I wouldn’t really blame the medical department largely because, when you get an injury you don’t blame the hospital, you either blame your body(injury prone players e.g Kjaer) or you blame the coach who is playing you in a position/for a duration your body isn’t naturally suited for. The medical staff is just doing what they learnt to do in medical school, nothing more nothing less…but I would blame pioli because he is the leader, and as a leader whatever is going on in your team is always your fault, especially if you would’ve looked into the issue and find out what is the issue with your players, it could actually be incompetence of the medical staff, a problem with the training ground, poor tactics that strain the bodies or over usage of players, generally speaking it is his fault, he has let this go on soon enough because he could’ve requested an audit of the injuries and could actually play a hand in sacking incompetent employees, but no he just goes with the flow and blames the poor results on the injuries, one may actually think he’s using them as a scapegoat or something…he’s using Leao way too much, krunic too, reijnders too, tomori too, thiaw too, even if all CB’s were fully fit and ready, he’d still pick tomori and thiaw to play against low level teams, you can’t overuse a something when you have spares and complain when it breaks down due to fatigue
Stefano Pioli should start playing the 4-2-3-1 and Acmilan should not attempt playing 4-3-3 again