Stefano Pioli shed some light on some of the tactical choices that he made during AC Milan’s win against Monza at San Siro this afternoon, including playing Tommaso Pobega in a deeper role.
When the starting line-ups were announced, many believed it would be a four-man defence with Simon Kjaer and Fikayo Tomori as the central duo then Alessandro Florenzi and Theo Hernandez as the full-backs.
However, there was often the resemblance of a three-man back line with Tommaso Pobega playing in a deeper position, at least before he came off in the first half due to an injury.
Pioli responded to a tactical question from Carlo Pellegatti, who asked the coach the reasons for choosing Pobega as left-sided centre-back in a three. The journalist prefaced the question with the fact that he is not a tactical expert, and Pioli responded as follows.
“Not everyone admits like you that they understand little about tactics. The tactical choice is because we we want to be aggressive, we accept numerical parity up front and at the back,” he said (via MilanNews).
“I have willing and intelligent players, they attack with five men and therefore we defended with five men so as not to let the full-backs run too much. It’s not a five, three or two defence. They are the principles.
“Today we did it well, parity above and below. If the parity above isn’t intense it doesn’t work, today it worked. If this aspect isn’t here, the defensive mechanisms don’t work.”
It looked like 343 to me and I liked the way they played in this setup. Only difference was, it was an open play from Monza that’s why we were able to combine and attack more. We struggle against closed down counter attacking teams.
I agree Ted and initially i didnt get why pobega was replaced with simic because I initially missed that he was playing in a 3 man defense but overall it felt as a 3-4-3 formation but what do I know.
It was 433 with Pobega as left mezzala. After Simić entered it looked like 343 with Theo and Florenzi higher up. Also, Tomori was standing quite wide out on left while Kjaer and Simić were more central. Dunno either, I’m just glad it worked out in the end.
Yeah ok, glad it worked out as well.
Pioli Stefano you still have little to address your using extra defenders because your not confident of your so called 4-3-3 please return to our safeguarded formation 4-2-3-1 so Stefano Pioli stop deceiving yourself