When the first international break arrived in September, Strahinja Pavlovic had been one of the few bright spots for AC Milan. Now, he is a curious case.
As MilanNews write, Pavlovic showed plenty of good things in his first few appearances but two months later he has become perhaps the biggest question mark of the summer window. The Serbian is playing in a league that’s very different from the Austrian one, and is still adapting.
Paulo Fonseca, on the eve of the Champions League match against Club Brugge, spoke about his decision to go from giving Pavlovic regular starts to then benching him.
“This is a different reality for Pavlovic, it’s a different way of playing compared to the one he had in his last club. He is someone who always wants to anticipate, he is a physical player,” he said.
“We want a more balanced central defender. I think he did better, but I also think he needs to grow: he didn’t have a game without errors [in reference to Milan-Udinese] but he did well. If we make a comparison with his other games he has grown a lot. But there are still things to improve.”
Pavlovic started against Napoli, Monza and Cagliari. Against the league-leaders he lost a physical battle to Romelu Lukaku early on which led to the opener, and in Sardinia he was a ‘disaster’ with his positioning and reading of the game.
The early signs suggested that the former Partizan Belgrade man had the grit and determination that Milan needed but just needed some tactical adjustment, and yet if anything that evolution seems to have turned into a regression.
There are some interesting comments worth reviewing such as from Igli Tar , who was very close to bringing him to Lazio when he was the sporting director there.
“He arrived at the best age to express himself at his best. I think he still has a lot to improve in the football that counts, that is, top-tier football because he is a complete player in some ways but in the defensive phase he still has to improve something,” he said.
Savo Milosevic , the coach who gave him his debut at Partizan and who knows Serie A very well having played at Parma, said similar a few months ago.
“He has to learn tactically, there’s no doubt about it, because Italian football is different than elsewhere. And I’m sure he’ll learn quickly because he’s a boy who never stops. His choice to go to Italy was excellent.”
Patience is needed, but while Milan’s defence continues to let in multiple goals per game in half their fixtures, there isn’t much patience to dish out.
In my book he has been a question mark since day 1 and his questionable (although strangely lauded) performance against Parma. At least then he had some self-confidence. Without that, he has nothing.
Wrong signing and he wasn’t the type of defender Milan needed. Once again this management is showing their incompetence in identifying the right profile of players needed to improve the team and take the squad to the next level.
The money spent for Pavlovic and Emerson was a complete waste of money. It would have been better to keep Kalulu and spend that money on getting a top quality center back.
I think the idea was to get a left-footed centre back who can help in the buildup from behind. That is not completely irrational, but the problem is that we ended up spending 18M€ on a rugby player who only knows how to charge forward and whose passing abilities are close to non-existant.
He might improve further down the line, but we already have too many raw products that need to improve, at some point we should shout for an experienced player.
My recommendations for defense would have been to keep Simic and promise him more time and get Mats Hummels, a free and experienced leader in the defense who just recently played a great UCL final.
We could have used those 18M€ from Pavlovic and 15M€ from Emerson to improve our midfield, which look very shallow right now.
Kalulu was always injured and regressed since the Scudetto. Keeping in context.
Pavlo needs more time.
Emerson is an odd choice any way you slice it …
Yes, last year Kalulu played just 11 games out of 50+ the team played.
He got injured on 13th September, came back October 19th.
THEN he got injured again on 29th October, came back on 25th Feb.
THEN got injured again March 17th and was out until April 30th.
It wasn’t just because of his long injury lay-off, but also because he got injured again and again so soon afterwards.
His second injury was 10 days after his first one, and his third injury was 20 days after his second.
Seems like everyone forgot about that.
He was a risk. The only thing I didn’t like about letting him go, was that he went to a direct rival. If he had left Italy I’m pretty sure not too many fans would be upset.
Or not sign a CB at all given we had Gabbia and Tomori.
It’s the constant search for ‘better’ which is the problem.
Usual stuff happens with him and other players like Tijji and others. Have anything close to a decent performance and it gets over exaggerated as great performances. But the opposite is also true. When they do badly, they get overly punched down on. There isn’t a middle ground .
To be fair to Reijnders, he did improve once he started playing alongside a more defensive profile and when he was used in a more natural way. He is only 1goal away from equalizing his last year G+A contribution and we’re only in November. Of course this is not the only parameter to be judged upon for a midfielder neither the most important, but still, some improvement.
Pavlovic might improve, but again I’m sick and tired of us always going for young and raw players instead of proven ones. We can’t have an entire team made of the likes of Musah, Pavlovic, Thiaw,…
Ever since you started ignoring me we seem to be more on the same page!
I don’t remember putting anyone on ignore.
Yes but there’s also the built-in narrative that new signings championed by the media are simply awesome, and whilst any players that have been out of the rumor-mill for too long get slaughtered.
No one with brains ever thought this guy has ever been a bright spot, he has been terrible from preseason! Even Simic is a better defender than this guy
Instead of getting him and Emerson, Milan could have got Bungiorno and still have a couple of mils left. He is still young and can develop but with Bungiorno Milan would have had a imidiate proven starter.
It’s people saying ‘we could’ve got so and so instead’ who are very much part of the problem.
What actually should’ve happened is widespread protests as the club tried to undermine the club captain (Calabria) and Gabbia.
But instead the fans demanded new signings and then got ones they didn’t want. As always.
Oh yes! Blame the fans!!! 😀 😀 😀
“It’s people saying ‘we could’ve got so and so instead’ who are very much part of the problem.”
As if the management picked the new players by a popularity contest…
Also some of us fans proposed way better players than the ones we ended up with, even with the same price or sometimes even less.