Santiago Gimenez has once again stressed that he had no desire to leave AC Milan, and believes his goal could lead to more.
Milan did what they had to do at San Siro tonight as they eased past Lecce, winning 3-0 in the end to reach the last 16 of the Coppa Italia. Jamil Siebert’s early red card certainly helped, and Gimenez got the opener not long after that happened, firing in a lovely Davide Bartesaghi cross.
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It is a goal that should silence a lot of the external noise surrounding the Mexican for a short while at least. After all the summer transfer speculation the missed chances were not helping his cause, and yet the hope is that the goal will be the first of many this season.
‘Never considered leaving’
Gimenez spoke to Mediaset after the game to share his emotions after getting the duck off his back, and his comments are via MilanNews.
Finally, a goal!
“A striker has to score goals. In recent games, it didn’t come despite having plenty of chances. But with this goal, more can come.”
The last few hours of the window seemed frantic…
“As a kid, I dreamed of playing here at Milan. I wanted to stay, but thank God I’m here and playing for the team of my dreams. Since the first second, I’ve never considered leaving this team.”
Congratulations 👏
Santi need extra lesson from Pipo. Where and when, right position and right time. Long way to go Santi. But Winter transfer is close, so keep scoring
Pippo can score best with foot and header. He’s also quicker.
“Where and when, right position and right time. Long way to go Santi. ”
LOL, nope. He has been in the right places at the right time but his touches and shots have let him down. He’s getting multiple chances but fails to convert them.
If he’d only get one chance per match I could agree he needs to “learn from Pippo”, but wasting 3 chances in 60 minutes tells he has been at right places. Just the end product has been missing/lacking.
I dunno. Others have pointed out that Gimenez has a bad first touch.
Watching his technique, it’s a bigger problem, it’s that he needs a first touch at all, and that he doesn’t use the first touch to put the ball in a more advantageous situation.
All of Pulisic’s goals against Udinese and in this match were first time shots with NO FIRST TOUCH – the GK didn’t have a chance to anticipate the shot.
All those one on ones with the GK that Gimenez misses are because he NEEDS a first touch and his first touch usually puts the ball closer to the GK making it a much harder shot.
That’s NOT a sign of lack of confidence, that’s a sign of lack of technical skills, something you should be acquiring when you are in the 16-20 year old range.
Pulisic acquired those skills when he joined BVB’S academy ar age 15. Gimenez? Not.
There was a similar USMNT striker named Jozy Altidore with a horrible first touch. In the Eredivisie, he scored something like 28 goals in one season and was sold to then Premiere League team Sunderland.
Against the tighter defenses of the EPL, Jozy could barely get any shots on goal off and he failed miserably.
Gimenez started this Lecce match with ANOTHER bad first touch against the GK.
My prediction is that he’s not going to be able to fix his technical deficiencies in time to stay with Milan.
“I dunno. Others have pointed out that Gimenez has a bad first touch.
Watching his technique, it’s a bigger problem, it’s that he needs a first touch at all, and that he doesn’t use the first touch to put the ball in a more advantageous situation.
.
.
That’s NOT a sign of lack of confidence, that’s a sign of lack of technical skills, something you should be acquiring when you are in the 16-20 year old range.”
Not shooting with first touch is EXACTLY the sign of lack of confidence!!! 😀 😀 😀 He’s doesn’t feel secure about shooting first touch so he thinks he’s better off “taming” the ball before shooting to get a better shot. That’s 100% on lack of confidence.
Pulisic can shoot at any angles with first touch because he’s flying high ATM and everything is working for him. Watch him miss 5-10 good chances and he’d start taking the extra touch too before shooting.
In the book Das Reboot, the author explained how in the mid to late 2000s the Germans came up with a mechanized training machine to train players how to trap the ball and quickly pass it to a changing target. The book explained it was a machine like this that produced Mario Götze’s fabulous shot on goal against Argentina that won the final of the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, where an onrushing Götze trapped a chest high cross and shot the ball past the GK before the ball hit the ground.
In that same WC, an 18 year old German born Julian Green, who had come up through Bayern’s youth system, produced a near identical goal for the USMNT in their knockout match with Belgium.
Coincidence? Absolutely not. You aren’t born with such skills, nor do you learn how to trap and shoot like that with years of street football in Brazil.
I have never seen an American born player with such terrific shooting skills and silky soft ball trapping ability as Pulisic. And the reason is that he wasn’t stuck in the USA, he was able to get a Croatian passport and get into Borussia Dortmund’s academy at age 15. EU rules limit non-EU citizens to age 18 for entering EU youth academies.
Pulisic himself has attributed his success to getting into this academy at age 15. He said in an interview that the intense extra training at ages 16-18 made all the difference in the world in terms of his skills and career.
Every other American player stuck in the USA, stuck in the execrable MLS academies and youth systems, lacks this same level of skill. A good trap by American/MLS standards is to knock the ball 5-6 feet (2 meters) away from you.
Gimenez? Stuck in Mexico’s Liga MX until age 21. Liga MX is similar to MLS, if not worse, in terms of youth development. Which is why Gimenez also traps the ball just like American trained Jozy Altidore, knocking the ball 5-6 feet away with his first touch.
Go to Youtube and search for “Footbonaut” to see how this machine works.
Believe me, I’ve been following USMNT and international football since 1994. Gimenez is NEVER going to reach the same skill level as Pulisic. It’s too late, his best years for perfecting these basic skills are past.
“Gimenez is NEVER going to reach the same skill level as Pulisic.”
Never claimed that. But self-confidence has a MASSIVE impact on every player’s decision-making. When things are going well, they have the nerves to try more difficult things – and are likely to succeed too. But when there’ a “gorilla on the back”, they’re thinking too much and trying too hard. That will often result into taking extra touches etc.
Now napoli weekend…forza milan
Yes my friends… future looks bright…weekend a win against napoli…we will win…
Nobody is talking about how they said allegri is no good for Milan and his football is boring and only thing he’s concern about is defending.
This is a Milan team that plays better without their stars and dominate. No Rafa no puli and we dominate games and play well.
Not relying on any player.
With this allegri we so much criticized from the beginning. I’m more confident of Milan winning matches comfortably without our stars
We are more a team now than any other year I’ve seen Milan.
Above all.. our second team looks way better than Milan first team of last season.
Allegri is Milan new star ⭐️
He has brought back the pride in Milan. And every player is sweating for the shirt by the minute.
This is a Milan team that if you are given an opportunity to play and miss it you might now get another cause there are many good players waiting to seize that chance.
We have now more than one good players. And our old players seems to be getting better due to them..
God bless tare and allegri
This is because we sign added world class player rather than a coach. Remember we are losing first match. And so conte did.
I meant conte asked for players he can work on.
Easy man. We will see how we strong when come good team.
We play with disaster teams so dont be happy too much.
We will see what will hapenes. We still only have good midfielders and nothing else,no deffense at all and about attack its same
This pippo eh be like say your mama leave the original pikin for hospital come carry mumu come back house.
I agree and I kept telling them to give the guy some time to work. In my books, Allegri has proven that he is more than competent to lead Milan. He will alwayd have his issues and doubters, but I think he is currently what we need given the circumstances. A thing I liked about this Milan is that you see players smiling and actually having fun rather than just being stressed and under scrutiny throughout last season. We will have our bad games there is no doubt, but as long as we keep this energy we will do well and hopefully qualify to the CL. Let us not get carried aways though, we still lack quality in certain positions and it is up to the players to up their game with tougher opponents with more quality. Pavlovic, Tomori, Saelemaekers, Gabbia, Gimenez, RLC and Fofana will need to prove they have the quality against tough opponents and that they will not crumble. It begins with Napoli and I have a feeling that we will play well, but the road is long and I hope these specific players show some character to win or at least fight for the team (which I am optimistic about.
Without Modric and/or Rabiot I don’t see this team working. And we had good players before as well, the manager is what changed. Remember that we loaned our undisputed starter Saelemakers to Roma last season? So the players were there, but no one knew how to use them properly.
It was a good match for Santi. His movement and positioning were great, as evident from his number of chances. He was a bit unlucky, and a bit lacking in his finishing, but he will improve. I think we have a decent striker in our hands, we just need patience
He missed too much chancies. If he not start score more goals we need sell him.
He miss too much 100% chancies that not good