Following the crazy ending to the game between Genoa and AC Milan, Stefano Pioli spoke to the media and shared his post-match thoughts. He heaped praise on Olivier Giroud, who finished the game in goal.
Milan struggled to break down Genoa, who defended with all of their men, and it thus took until the 87th minute before Christian Pulisic found the back of the net. A great goal, but the drama didn’t end there.
Mike Maignan was sent off in injury time and Olivier Giroud had to go in goal, making a necessary save moments later. Speaking to DAZN after the game, as cited by MilanNews, Pioli shared his thoughts on the madness.
In all your years as a manager, had you ever experienced such an intense endgame?
“This is the beauty of our job, you experience emotions that you don’t even imagine. It was a strange match, very tense and nervous. We struggled but we wanted to win and we believed in it, great credit to my players. We played a lot, sacrificed a lot, we put in a performance to try to win.”
The emotions with Giroud in goal…
“I’d like to think that what Oli did when he put on Mike’s shirt is part of our spirit. It is part of our mentality. The fact of trying to bring home an important victory. He wanted Pulisic to go in goal because he has probably already done it in the past, but I told him there was a free kick and he is small. Afterwards, it went well, it also takes luck. We’ve been lucky in the last few episodes. But I think it’s part of the mentality of a group that wants to give its best, it’s the thing that makes me happiest.”
The reaction after the lost derby…
“I believe that we have always been a team that to win had to play really well and play better than the opponent. Now we can win even dirty games. It’s an important growth, there are also these days and above all there are playing every three days. Let’s be clear, we returned from Dortmund on Thursday, after which on a physical and mental level was the match in which we had the highest physical data of these four years at Milan. It was truly an open-field European match. Winning tonight suffering and struggling against a difficult opponent, to whom we must give great credit. Growth means winning even the games in which you can’t play significantly better than your opponents.”
Pulisic’s goal, controversial…
“VAR would have seen it 3-4 times, if they decided it was a goal then obviously it was right. Then I don’t know and honestly, I don’t even care.”
How do you rate the performance of the new trident?
“In terms of characteristics, I didn’ change that much. These are the positions. I changed to have a team from a mental point of view. We knew it was an intense and difficult match, I preferred to have fresher players from the start, who couldn’t wait to have this situation. I think they did well, then afterwards I repeat there were difficulties, but not for individual performances. I talked a lot with the players who were supposed to come here to Milan, I convinced them by saying that they are important players for me. As long as they demonstrate to me with their attitudes and performances that they can play any match, I will let them play.”
The next important matches, with Juve without Theo and Mike…
“On the yellow card for Theo I didn’t see the foul, I was following the action. He told me that he made a normal foul, the only one of the match… It fits. But let’s talk about the standings again after Juventus and Napoli. It’s sad not to have Mike and Theo, I hope that the break will bring back Kalulu, Loftus, Krunic, and that Jovic will be in an even better condition.”
Milan will take on Juventus after the break and are currently top of the table, thanks to their win and Inter’s draw against Bologna. The break comes at a very good time, in other words.
This manager is a fraud. Our current points tally is a miracle considering how bad we are. We have never been this clueless and ugly in our football. We are lucky we have some more individual quality than we used to that can save us in these tricky games. It’s like 5 games in a row now where we haven’t been that impressive. Need Pulisic to grab the winner after nearly 90mins. So hard to watch. Anyway, Forza Milan and Pioli Out.
Yeah, yeah. We have the worst possible head coach. That’s why we are last and fighting relegation. Oh wait, aren’t we actually first? Yes, we are! And we are isolated at the top! Huh! Maybe we aren’t as bad as you’re saying, huh?
Serie A is a very tough league and it isn’t easy to play it simultaneously with the UCL. Under all this pressure, we are first. So ALL the other 19 teams (and most of them don’t play the UCL) are doing worse than we are; still, you talk of us like we are the weakest team of Serie A!!!
People bash Pioli when he rotates because it makes it more difficult to earn all 3 points (duh, it does, obviously!) but we must rotate, we’re playing Lega Serie A, UCL and Coppa this season; we just had the most intense match against Dortmund and our players were visibly tired and low energy!).
Then people are also upset at Pioli when we doesn’t rotate and players get injured.
We just had the craziest calendar ever, playing tough games every 3 days for weeks in a row, and we outplayed two quality European opponents (couldn’t find the winner but we played way better than both Newcastle and Dortmund), and we won 7 out of 8 league games, and even though we lost the Derby in humiliating faction (it wouldn’t have been like that if we had Tomori there), we are now sitting pretty, isolated top, and 2 points ahead of the same team that beat us. They’ve dropped 5 points already while we only dropped 3. Should we bash their coach like you guys keep bashing Pioli?
Remember when we were the ones who dropped points to mid-table teams and bottom-feeders? Well, it’s no longer happening. Forza Milan!
amen!
I criticize Pioli because breaking a low block when you have so much possession is litterally a set play EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. It’s something you teach on the training ground. You move the ball around to get the positioning right and BAM! You run the play. The amount of times we ran around clueless this game was frustrating. We lucked out massively to come away with 3 points.
I joke when I say this but there is some truth to it, Pioli should watch one particular episode of Ted Lasso about triangles. He might come up with something brilliant.
We’re all those things IN SPITE of our coach, not because of him. Pioli is tactically clueless. What has helped us is individual quality from people like Leao and Pulisic, as well as some solid defending the last few games. That, and a lot of luck. We haven’t been convincing since we beat Torino at home back in August, which is coincidentally our last good performance. We’re not scoring goals, and we don’t have any team cohesion yet. Plus, a bunch of the new guys are not getting enough playing time to prove themselves.
We need rotation and to rest players, what we don’t need is stupidity. I will tolerate a lot of things, but not praise or excuses for this manager who has been clueless time and time again with his formations, his team selection and his substitutions. I don’t expect us to be good every single game, but I expect us to put in the effort and to at least have the occasional good game, which we haven’t had in weeks. I will credit Pioli when we have a good performance and the day he finally stops pulling his trousers down and bending over for Inzaghi.
Torino wasn’t our last good performance. We had several others, including both UCL games. Do you think it’s easy to play in Dortmund and outplay the hosts? Did you see what Newcastle did to PSG? These are tough opponents and we played very well against them. We didn’t find a winner goal but they didn’t, either.
A bunch of new guys are not getting enough playing time? Like who? By now most of our signings have had at least a full half. Only the very young Romero and Pellegrino haven’t, but they were on the bench today; it’s coming.
What substitutions today you didn’t like? They were spot on.
Inzaghi has indeed outcoached Pioli lately, unfortunately; I’ll give you that one.
Good teams have luck too. Sometimes the win is ugly but I’ll take the 3 points.
So, we have individual quality players and this somehow invalidates the wins? What would Inter be without Lautaro? What about Napoli without Osimhen and Kvara? Yeah, great teams have great players. I’m thankful that we have Leão (a player Pioli helped a lot in his development) and Pulisic (a player Pioli wanted the management to get).
So the 4-3-3 formation is bad? Funny that we won 7 out of 8 games with it.
You said “considering how bad we are” up there in the first post. No, we AREN’T bad. We are actually the league’s first placed team. We won 7 out of 8 games in Serie A, one of the toughest leagues in the world where even mid-table and bottom-feeders can perform and make it difficult for the top teams. If that’s being so bad, 21 points and the isolated lead, I don’t know what being good is.
The only thing we could have done better in Serie A so far, was winning the Derby. I consider it an accident more than anything. Theo almost scored in first half, for a hair. Then we suffered two goals that were basically the fault of an overwhelmed Thiaw who is never as good when his trusted companion Tomori is not there. Then Leão scored. But when we suffered the 3rd goal we mentally collapsed and the other two were consequences. I am convinced that this could have been a lot different if we had Tomori there and if Theo had scored that attempt. Suddenly Inter would be the one panicking. I don’t think the 5-1 reflects the true difference in quality between these two teams. Better proof, we have 21 points, Inter has 19. Inter played very poorly against Empoli and could have dropped two more points to the, then, dead last team. They only prevailed after a lucky deflection, which came late.
Yes, even top teams like Inter and Milan have bad games. But we most definitely aren’t bad. Count our blessings, man. Be less negative about the team of your heart. Forza Milan!
Luigi its a waste of time. They know better.
Completely agree. However Pioli in fact is clueless with tactics. I concur that individual talent is giving us the top of the table, and not team play. And that is something can be blamed for. Today, however, I think he was right in what he did. Maybe 3 changes in the offensive line was too much, but that’s it. The problem with Milan, IMHO, is the predictability
You think we played well against Dortmund? Come on, pal. I will grant Newcastle (again, no goal), but not BVB. We were lame in that game. You’re just fooled by the results. Newsflash: these results will not continue if we don’t improve.
Also, you think one full half is enough for entirely new players to get used to this team? We’re not even playing well enough to accompany them, let alone anything like that. I bet you think CDK was also treated incredibly well by the management. The subs at half-time were all desperate and came out of nowhere. Oh, let me take off our two wingers and bring on Leao and Pulisic who had no effect on the game anyway, until right at the end. Those are not good subs, that’d called getting lucky.
Sometimes I need to remind myself that people on this site don’t understand football as a game, they’re just fans.
Yeah, getting hammered 5-1 by Inter in one of the worst performances we’ve ever put in was ”an accident”. The only reason I am negative is BECAUSE we are bad, not because I want us to be bad. I’m delighted we’re winning most of our games despite not being good. It’s called being realistic.
You are correct. The talent of this squad far exceeds Pioli’s tactical deficiencies; that’s why we get Ws. If we had a coach with offensive tactics we’d be smacking these teams 3-0 and not scraping by. And let’s not get into his in-game subs….
I’ve been supporting Milan for decades. But I never see fans as pathetic as you who complaint soooo much even after Milan won an intense match and sit at the top of the table.
At this rate, i reccomend you stop support Milan and just go watch other team that fits with what you wants.
I agree with you 100% ForzaMilan ! These fans that talk this cheaply of Pioli are an embarssment. This season after changing 10 players, changing formation we are first in the league playing good attacking football . It was for me a joy to watch the team against Dortmund in Signal aduna , it showed how much this team progressed these last seasons to play like that in that stadium.
@ sanerossonero and others grow up and be humble. You can criticize but be respectful as you know you will never replace Pioli as the coach of Milan or any other serie A team.
I don’t care. Bite me. It’s you losers that support this fraud of a manager that are pathetic.
You are the fraud and the loser … and you like to advertise it too.
We had luck this game. I don’t remember that we usually have luck.
But team that fighting deserves luck, and even more luck.
We still missing “that something” to be more dominant, but that is probably OK, due to fact many players are new and very young.
For now, the formula is looking successful, in terms of reaching every year champions league with young and not so very expensive team
Generating more revenue, we can expect some new much stronger players in attack in compare to Jovic or Origi.
Giroud maybe becoming our new legend. Who knows..
And also, the team today was visibly tired and low energy 3 days after the difficult Dortmund game. The calendar has been crushing but we are still winning. Yes, we got lucky but we deserved the luck, for our fighting spirit in difficult circumstances despite the fatigue. We had our second worst performance of the season but still managed to find a way to win. That’s being gritty and resilient. Forza Milan.
Oli, gotta love that guy! Wow! Now he has a formidable goalkeeping save to his name. What a career!
Yes ,Oli is incredible and he has contagious charisma! What a game against Genoa .. Everything happened but the boys kept pushing going forward and we were unlucky not to score earlier! And defended when we needed,an amazing result for us.
Like others here ,I can’t believe the negativity of some fans, they surely have not being watching our team for the last 10 years.
We have evolved from last year already and we have a better team all round, and you can tell the team has even more potential.
Forza Milan
I like you,but please, just admit you came drunk on ur job tonight,or u lost ur mind for 2 hours.
I respect Pioli and his players because they always gave their all to win a match. And it’s definitely not easy playing a very defensive team like Genoa who managed to beat Lazio and Roma and held Napoli only 2 days after an intense match against Dortmund.
So i don’t get why some fans didn’t respect Pioli and the players efforts?
Why these fans keeps complaining and throwing tanthrum like a spoiled ungrateful kids when what they only did was watching the match from their home while the players running, falling, or got bruise from tackles for 90 minutes!
Police isn’t good! We have forgotten consecutive years we were mid-table without any European football under several coaches. I hope we break away from others like Napoli last season.
Serie B level coaches, with the existing team squad, struggled to beat Genoa. Next against Juventus and PSG we are waiting for the results and Pioli’s comments, hopefully you will be replaced soon!!!
Giroud is a legend ,,his do or die attitude,and sheer desire to win …I have said it before that it’s his attitude and passion,,that helps the team ,and of course his ability..I am fed up with criticism of him ..
I was so pleased to see him ,pulisic and reafeo leao come on ,as in the first half we had lots of pace ,but the team running around like headless chickens ..The more organised subs made the difference
Yes pioli was correct changes have to be made ,and he did the correct thing ,,as many players are fatigued due to the amount of matches played .
It was not a good game to watch ,,but hey we hung in there and ground out a result ..it’s matches like these
that decide the outcome of things ..
We are sitting pretty at the top of the standings.
I still believe with have a great chance of winning the scuddeto..
Giroud was a real hero!