Italy has a new champions after Napoli were officially crowned as the Scudetto winners last night, but just how has AC Milan’s title defence gone so badly wrong?
MilanNews writes how Milan set out at the beginning of the season with the aim of repeating their exploits in the past season, which culminated in winning the Scudetto after a fight with Inter until the final round.
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However, Luciano Spalletti’s team have instead dominated the league and deserved to win the title. In fact, their Scudetto win had never been in question except in the very first few rounds of the season.
Napoli’s win at San Siro suggested that there could be a long and close fight between the two teams to be crowned champions, but it did not end up going that way as nobody ended up being a real challenger.
In a few months, Pioli’s team went from an explosion of joy after the Scudetto win to a very tiring Champions League fight, which today sees Pioli and his team involved in a crazy and precarious battle in sixth place in the standings.
The reasons are many and well-known: from a squad not reinforced in the summer to attention and energy put into the Champions League journey, plus Maignan’s long injury and some wrong tactical choices.
It’s clear that you can’t win every year and it’s also clear that Napoli deserve it, but to have such a sharp drop-off must be a worry for the management.
Trotters Independent Traders don’t worry. Now they have assets which could be easily sold anytime 😉
It’s just pioli to blame nobody else
know people are looking for a scapegoat, but this seasons failures are not only on one person.
– Everything started with an all time bad mercatos, players coming in and going out, last summer and the previous summer as well.
Playing a whole season with only 1 striker who is 36 years old.
So that’s on management.
– The coach playing the same stale style and refusing to change even though he didn’t have the players anymore to continue playing that way because of the poor work by the management. That’s on Pioli and the sporting management.
– The poor performances by the players. The so called best players on the team were nowhere to be found for about 3.5 months of the season after the WC. Couple of them had the excuse of being tired after playing deep in the WC and the disappointment of losing the final, but what was Leao, Tonali, Bennacer,Tomori excuses for being straight up trash?
– And lastly Maignan absence and the inadequate GK replacement, which is again on the management. After his last season performance Tata had no business being Maignan back up but management did nothing to address the issue.
People want Pioli fired, but If the management continues with their poor work in building the squad, nothing will change.
“Playing a whole season with only 1 striker who is 36 years old.
So that’s on management.”
Well… They had two: Giroud & Origi. Then they thought Rebic would be his usual self and can be used as a false 9 and Zlatan would stay fit. I’m sure they also calculated CDK can be used as CF. So they thought they’d have 2+3 strikers. Plenty enough. They just didn’t realize what we knew: Origi is a useless fake who cannot score. And CDK is a whole nother story…
“It’s clear that you can’t win every year.”
Well that’s an understatement.
Since the turn of the millennium Milan has won 3 scudetti, one in each decade.
Anyway, congrats to Napoli. They deserved it by dominating the league all year long. The race was basically over in January. They played the best as a team but also had Kvara, the best player in the league, and Osimhen, the best striker in the league.
“It’s clear that you can’t win every year.”
Correct me if I’m wrong but did’t Juve win like 9 scudetti in a row? I think that “kind of” debunks that claim.
I don’t see Pioli as a problem at all. We were neck and neck with Napoli until the World Cup break, are in the CL semi-finals, and still in the top four fight. The main issues are:
1. A poor transfer market: For the starting lineup, we needed a striker, a right winger, and an attacking midfielder. We only went for an attacking midfielder in CDK.
2. Injuries: We didn’t go for a striker hoping Ibra would recover. He didn’t. Origi and Rebic were often injured. Maignan’s injury destabalized the whole defense
3. A young squad under-performing: People keep forgetting how young the team is. Most of the starters are 25 or younger so inconsistency, poor decision making in the final third, mental lapses, and defensive errors are unfortunately normal. It is not normal however to get no contribution whatsoever from CDK, Adli, Origi, and Rebic.
“For the starting lineup, we needed a striker, a right winger, and an attacking midfielder. We only went for an attacking midfielder in CDK.”
You forgot the Liverpool-legend. The amazing UCL-winner Origi. So… M&M did bring us a glorious and highly effective striker. Somehow he has delivered exactly what some of us expected based on his history (and stats): nothing.
Pioli needs a wake up call, milan needs to stop letting small teams beat them and embarrasse us, I mean Napoli dominated the league they deserve to Win the scudetto.
Only mirricle we need now is to win CL that way we will automatically quilify, but knowing milan and their inconsistencies 🙄