Paulo Fonseca pledged to work on AC Milan’s defensive phase during the preseason, and yet the team have let in six goals across the first three Serie A games of the season.
MilanNews recall that the worrying thing is how many of the goals that Milan have let in have come from similar circumstances, which indicates a trend that they have failed to fix after other teams attempted (and succeeded) to exploit it.
Against Torino it was Ilic’s cross from the left for the incoming Bellanova on the right, then Lazaro from the left for Zapata in the middle of the box. Against Parma it was Valeri from the left for the arriving Man on the right, then Almqvist from the left for Cancellieri in the middle of the box.
Last night, Nuno Tavares ran down the left to find Castellanos in the middle of the area: goal. Then, five minutes later, Tavares again cut back for Dia in the middle of the penalty box: goal. Milan have conceded six goals in their first three league games and all in exactly the same way.
If in Parma-Milan there were some individual, tactical and attitude shortcoming (Theo Hernandez’s lack of intensity, mainly) in Lazio-Milan we saw all the tactical shortcomings of players out of position who did not have a clear idea of where to be and when.
This, however, is nothing new. Milan has been conceding goals like this since Stefano Pioli’s time and while Fonseca preached a radical change in the defensive phase and in the way of defending, the mistakes so far remain the same.
Strahinja Pavlovic admitted after the game that there is an issue to be fixed: “All the goals we have conceded are similar but we have to work better and grow as a team, we will work on it in the coming weeks.”
Fonseca did not hide his concern: “It’s a good question, but it’s not difficult to answer. Today we conceded the same goals but we were organised, we also have to work individually on these details to avoid conceding these goals. Obviously I’m worried about the goals always conceded in the same way.”