Franco Ordine believes that there needs to be some tactical questions asked of AC Milan after their defeat against Borussia Dortmund, but also some psychological ones as well.
The 3-1 defeat versus Dortmund in midweek left Milan’s Champions League last 16 hopes hanging by a very thread, and it also exposed the soft underbelly of the squad in times when they need to be resilient the most.
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Speaking in his latest column for MilanNews, Ordine touched upon some of the things that are concerning him from the pro-Maldini camp to the constant calls for Pioli to be sacked, and he spoke about the lack of leadership and tactical intelligence shown in midweek.
“The gesture of desperation by captain Davide Calabria on the occasion of Thiaw’s injury will not have escaped anyone’s notice. He put his hands in his hair as if to say: ‘Oh no!’. Well: this means that at that moment such moral distress occurred in the team as to cause the subsequent holes and the final result,” he said.
“No player on the field, not even the expert on duty, Giroud, was able to revive the group by infusing a hint of reaction to the event. This too must lead to some reflection. Without leaders on the field there is no future.
“A tactical deficit also emerged against Borussia which is worth examining. As we saw, Pioli used Calabria as a fake winger to bring Chukwueze into the middle of the pitch, just as Pulisic did to free up space for Theo on the left.
“With two sensational differences: 1) that Calabria’s opponent, Bynoe-Gittens, didn’t follow him and when he set off again he put the Rossoneri defence in crisis; 2) the opportunity Calabria had at the end of the first half was wasted.”
The point on Calabria is a salient one, given that Bynoe-Gittens gave him real trouble in the defensive phase and yet there was no adaptation to change the approach and guarantee more coverage/less space for the winger to attack. The full-back brought the Englishman down for an early penalty, so the warning signs were there.
I’m the first to hear you analyse the Calabria penalty situation different. Every one is like, Calabria should have done better. But you made a point that the tactics should have be reviewed again to aid Calabria in those 1v1 situations. He was struggling with the skill of the Dortmund man but nothing was done to save the situation and it ended up worse.
Calabria simply is not a captain material, there is nothing leadership in him,he is quiet,small,he looks like a kid,the refs has no respect to him,also lack of quality and basic skills,he is our kid ,but not for captain,armband is just a more pressure to him,he would be play better without that responsibility.Also to many mistakes,to many games he choked and let the team down,i doubt his teammates have trust in his leadership.
Pioli is incapable of adjusting tactics in-game. We’ve seen this now many times. Whatever gameplan he goes in with is what stays the entire match regardless of what the other team is doing. All he does is make a couple subs and hope things change. Pioli did well getting Milan back to this point but if we want to any further we will need a better tactician.
Look let’s stop criticising pioli ..that’s just not fair
We have been extremely unlucky with injuries to many key players..
We may be almost out of the champions leauge .
That said we still have to have some optimism that we could still win against Newcastle..
Let’s hope we can win our next game in the leauge .
We have a good chance of doing that even without our best players ..inter and juventus both face difficult games ,and could both drop points ..
I still believe we have a chance of the leauge..
Yes we need our best players back .
I believe we are due for some good fortune ..
It’s nothing to do with luck. Milan have had these ridiculous amount of injuries the entire time Pioli has been there and he has done nothing to change that so that is on him as well. Clearly they are doing something wrong in the way they are training and preparing for matches.
The ridiculous injury we have is because of our recruitment processes..its because of kind of players we recruit. That’s the problem a lot if us don’t understand. We buy cheap players who have no killer instincts. We keep on playing possessive football with not clear ability to score vital goals . When we conceed, the pressure increases to score goals at all cost, and from here we pick up avoidable injuries. If you notice, most of the injuries we have come from a must win matches. The cheap and average players we buy usually get overlaboured and in the end pick up injuries because they are being forced to adapt to a particular playing style.
GOOD / GREAT CAPTAINS lead by example,need I say more ?