It has been a relatively tough start to the season for Paulo Fonseca, most recently losing away at Fiorentina by two goals to one. Going by the average points per game, the Portuguese is the worst AC Milan manager in the last ten years.
As highlighted by Sky Italia earlier this evening (via MilanEye), the stat clearly shows that Fonseca is the worst among the Milan managers in the last ten years with 1.22 points per game. There are some caveats to this, though, including the fact that the Rossoneri have played a lot more games this season.
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📈 Fonseca is the Milan coach with the lowest average points after the first 9 games across all competitions in the last 10 years
[@SkySport] pic.twitter.com/tMOiJz9tM9
— Milan Eye (@MilanEye) October 10, 2024
Compared to Marco Giampaolo (1.29), for example, he had only been in charge of seven games at this point in the 2019-20 season (3W, 4L), whereas Fonseca has been in charge of nine (3W, 2D, 4L). Nevertheless, it’s clear that the season has been far from what the manager wanted.
The next few games, mainly against Udinese and Club Brugge, will be crucial to determine where Milan should go from here. The hope is that Fonseca can find the consistency he has been yearning for, but it might not happen.
None of us are surprised.
to be worse than pioli is a hard thing and fonseca is that
y alguien me dijo “troll” por decir la verdad del campeón de Ucrania (FONSECA)
🤮🇵🇹🤡👍🏻
Pioli is actually one of the most successful coaches in the history of Milan, it’s backed by data. He developed top players, qualified for UCL every year, won an unexpected Scudetto and went to UCL semifinals. He even finished 2nd last season despite a flood of injuries and a terrible midfield.
It would have been ok to fire him for an upgrade but what we got is the most average coach ever and someone that Lille fans were happy to get rid of.
Yeah Piolis stats is not up for discussion even though he made some awful mistakes and puzzling decisions towards the end of his tenure.
At some point he even had better stats than everyone except Ancelotti or was it Sacchi (?). Even if they coached in different and more difficult eras that still means a lot in my book.
People tends to think the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence but clearly that isn’t the case this time around.
Now I remember he had at one point, like two years into his tenure, the best stats amongst all Milan coaches minus Ancelotti back to the time of when Capello was coach. That is the second best coach by stats for over 25 years in the club.
He actually had more wins than Ancelotti and achieved them in fewer games than Ancelotti. I remember articles and comments about it here and elsewhere.
Oh ok Luigi I thought Ancelotti was the only one that was better than him in that span of time anyways Pioli did really great with us.
It doesn’t matter. We finished 2nd. We qualified in the top 2 in 3 of his seasons and top 4 in every full season he had.
Of course he made mistakes. He’s human.
His ‘puzzling decisions’ are just puzzling to you and me. They’re matters of opinion where our opinion carries less weight than a professional manager with the phenomenal record that Pioli had.
The league table doesn’t lie. And our opinions of him are irrelevant.
No sane management would fire a coach who finished 2nd in Serie A.
You are seriously grasping at straws here Maldinis Heir.
In the last 9 matches at the club if we include and goes back to our Europa League failure against Roma which is 9 matches combined (roughly 1.5 month) we won only 1 match and lost 4 matches while drawing 4 times in matches against bottom half/ relegation teams letting huge amounts of goals in against teams like Sassuolo 3-3, Genoa 3-3, Salernitana 3-3.
Leaving us with an “impressive” score of 19 – 18.
This is not about opinions its the writing on the wall and its clear as day for all to see so stop make the last part of his tenure rosy because it clearly wasn’t and if you insist on it then I’m sorry to say this then I can see it no other way than you are just acting as a fusspot for the sake of it but as I’ve already said several times his overall tenure with us was nevertheless great and even impressive
I’m not sure what mistakes or puzzling decisions you could be referring to given the league table doesn’t lie.
We finished 2nd.
So he made far fewer mistakes and far fewer puzzling than 18 other managers.
The issue is that like with so many things Pioli didn’t meet everyone’s expectations.
But modern football is a bit like modern sex, computers games (like porn) skew people’s expectations.
The fact is there weren’t many upgrades on Pioli because what he did was extraordinary. Add in his relationship with the players and the decision to fire him was negligent. But that’s what the fans wanted including the criminals running Curva Sud.
With fans like this who needs Inter.
Are you seriously kidding, now you are just trying to parade a certain narrative than being objective because if you remember anything about the end of his tenure then you will realize that he started some rather weird XI.s and playing players in different positions that cost us both matches and further progression in the Europa league. He also kept playing players until they got injured and even though he used a lot of different players it was mainly down to injuries.
You know very well that I supported Pioli throughout his time with us so don’t even dare to mention inter in regard of me because its downright preposterous,
When that is said there is no question that Pioli did overall great with us as I also already has mentioned further up.
Pioli had one of the best win rates out of all of our managers ever.
Our play is far better than when Giampaolo was the coach. We were soooo bad back then!
We shouldn’t have lost more than two games. We deserved to lose against Liverpool and Parma. We should have won at least two more and drawn against Leverkusen. We have had a bit of bad luck and made too many individual mistakes.
And to make it worse, look at Giampaolo’s team compared to that for Fonesca! I could expect that from Giampaolo with players like Suso, Biglia, Castellejo, Duarte, Laxalt, etc.
At least Fonesca has real players and he cant even top the points from Giampaolo!
yes and the reason is beacuse we didnt do many great signings emerson is worse than calabria abraham is not that good fofana and morata were the only good signings pavlovic were good but horrible in the first 2 matches and still from the last season our problem is still the midfield rb and back up to theo
Well not only this stat says so but yeh give him time until December and pray for CL Spot after new year
There is Professional Football to win a Match Not to Play nice!
Respekt to Bartho, a real Fan and good European!
Misleading graph and statistics. Small sample size for Fonseca, and not small sample size for some or all of the others. It’s combining multiple seasons of first 9 games for Pioli. That’s why he has just one bar. But he didn’t coach just one season. So it’s apparently averaging multiple seasons of first-9-games records. Fonseca has only one season. That’s misleading.
Yet Pioli wasn’t our worst coach the last 7-8 years it was actually Giampaolo and to actually make him look like prime Mourinho says enough for Fonsecas capabilities
I thought about your comment for a while with great interest and yes I believe it’s not well laid out. They should be more consistent especially in what they are measuring. For instance, many of those past coaches they never had European commitments in their first 9 games. I’m pretty sure those Montolivo-led squads had no answer for Liverpool or Europa League finalists. But I digress.
So I compiled the points for their first 9 games..so Pioli’s overall record which is dominant indeed is put aside for a more proper comparator in his first 9 shaky games.
First 9 games as coach:
Montella: 19 pts (2.11 per game)
Pippo: 16 pts (1.78 per game)
Gattuso: 14 pts (1.56 per game)
Miha: 13 pts (1.44 per game)
Pioli: 12 pts (1.33 per game)
Fonseca: 11 pts (1.22 overall, 1.57 per game league only).
Giampaolo: 9 pts (1.29 per game, 7 games)
So basically, Montella had the best start and Giampaolo is still trash as we all know 😂. However if we just consider the league only for Fonsy he moves from second from around bottom to around third best. Pioli, while is good overall, had a worse start…for now, and when considering only league games.
So yes you are right about the stats there, the comparators points after first 9 games aren’t appropriate
We have to consider that Pioli had a very different team when he started coaching Milan, filled with youngsters and average players. It’s day and night with the current team that has many internationals and a few world class players. Pioli developed most of the players that Fonseca doesn’t know how to use.
I think it’s a bits of truth from various parts. One can say Pioli “developed” players like Leao and Theo (although I’d want to define “develop”, since Leao seems to have taken a step back even going back to last season), but he also had a much better midfield with Bonaventura, Kessie, Calhanoglu and Bennacer, plus a CB pairing of Romagnoli and Kjaer (with the last bit of his juice), and a world class striker in Ibra (with the last bit of his juice left). Getting Ibra and Kjaer in January changed the trajectory of the season, as everything turned after that. We only lost twice during the remainder of the season after the new year. I don’t know. Botto line is Fonseca is clearly NOT an upgrade over Pioli, making it pointless to have fired Pioli. If you’re not going to go for a Conte or a Flick, or for a real “up and comer” like Motta, then what’s the point in making this change.
Exactly and Milan have a history of replacing managers and players with worse than what they already had. I knew they wouldn’t get Conte or conceicao, I thought maybe Motta until his gentleman agreement with Juve, I’d have taken De Zerbi over Fonseca honestly. I kept reading articles stating “Fonseca is a more evolved version of Pioli”, whoever wrote those articles should go work at Lucasfilm cause they’re seriously drawn to flights of fancy, Pioli has won a Serie A title while Fonseca has done nothing of note in any big league, I’m still waiting for the supposed upgrade we got to show it
Based on that start to where he took the team, I think history will look favourably upon him.
I’d also say many of those coaches had a far worse team than Fons and Pioli.
But Pioli era was a turning point from a really poor period. And now we don’t know how to make the best of it
Fonseca is a clown. Hope he gets fired ASAP!
It’s no coincidence we’re collecting negative records for second season in a row. It was clear as a day to many of us from the very start in last summer.
Yes – everyone wanted an upgrade on Pioli. What exactly have you “told you so” here?
Acting like you haven’t been here for a year saying that Ted and many of us were Inter fans, crying and whining, doom and gloom, etc. Because frugality and ego trips are the parameters to build success for sure. But maybe you can’t see it? Some people are slower.
I love to rub it in your face but do you really want to read it again? Ok.
That last summer I wrote, that’s a mistake. I meant the summer Cardinale and his boys took over the reins and decided to dismantle the project that brought us Scudetto and CL semis and waste 110 millions on bunch of mediocre players and moneyball could bees. Cause winning is boring and participating is fun.
That’s the “told you so”.
💯 bingo!
I’ve never seen a complete overhaul of a midfield win anything in the many years of watching football. It’s not like ppl weren’t trying to warn ppl that hey this approach is not good but get called haters. Ppl drank the cool aid of mediocre spending. They loved signings and the more the merrier. Ppl got caught up with quantity and not quality.
130m and only one good player to show for it. But back then it was the transfer window of decades. So yes, please continue to tell them so .
Piolo in his first 10 matches: 1.2 points.
And that wasn’t even against opponents like Bayer Leverkusen or Liverpool.
Like I’ve been saying, for me I want Fonseca fired not because of the points we dropped and the games we lost but rather because he throws the players under the bus, fosters disunity with his chaotic player management, and is not respected/obeyed by the players. When it’s like this, even great players tend to misbehave and be unmotivated to perform (yes, it’s the players’ fault too because that is unprofessional; but look at Roma under Mourinho’s end of tenure, and Napoli under Garcia: players are only human; they don’t perform well for a coach they hate or don’t respect).
While I understand that normally he’d need more time and firing him now is risky, I’d give more time to a new coach who was dropping points but was liked/respected by the players and fostered unity.
When instead a coach blames publicly his own players and is not respected by them, I’d rather see him gone sooner than later, to minimize the damage and hope for recovery.
With Fonseca, every week it’s a different drama. Even if he improves tactically, I don’t think his poor rapport and low stance with the players will improve, therefore he needs to go, lest no great player will renew or will want to come to Milan.
I usually take the other side of the argument with more time and the risk of hiring mid-season, but I agree with you on the interpersonal issues and their importance and if all presented by media is true, I agree with you entirely.
However, I am not confident how much of it is media sensationalism. That’s where the management needs to intervene as they know what’s the attitude behind the scenes.
For sure he is much more direct than Pioli, but that was one of the negatives of Pioli according to the fanbase that wanted him gone. I think he overplays a bit his “truths” in front of the media in his effort to make out of Leao a grown man – no need to speak about him in each press conference. Otherwise I don’t think anyone received criticism from him where it was not due.
The criticism was due, but you say it to the players behind closed doors; you don’t say it to the press. See, Pioli had many shortcomings and the end of his tenure was disastrous (before, he did accomplish great things) but even when the players deserved criticism, Pioli always said “the boys tried hard; all that didn’t go well is my fault.” Result, the players loved him. Do you remember how the players embraced him in his farewell game? Mark my words, they will never act the same way regarding Fonseca.
Agreed.
As long as Ibra is swinging his d*** around Milanello, our coach will never be someone with a strong personality.
😀 I guess our next coach will have to be a well hung horse then.
The Redbird Lovers have been awfully quiet as of late….wonder why that is 🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔