AC Milan head coach Stefano Pioli praised his side’s performance in last night’s win over Bologna, describing his team as being ‘organised’ and in control of the game.
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It was certainly a tricky test on paper for a new-look Milan side as they faced off against Thiago Motta’s Bologna at the Stadio Renato Dall’Ara to kick off the new Serie A campaign, needing to win to keep pace with Napoli, Inter and Juventus.
Win is exactly what they did, and it was thanks to two goals in the opening 21 minutes. The first was scored by Olivier Giroud as he fired in at the far post from Tijjani Reijnders’ first-time feed, and the second saw Giroud set up Christian Pulisic for a rocket of a shot from 20 yards out.
Pioli spoke to Milan TV after the game to give his thoughts on the result and the performance to begin the new campaign.
“The right approach, we took the game a quarter at a time. That was important and we did it really well. The game showed that we still need to work a lot, and that there are things we can do better,” he began.
“Bologna played well too. We were organised. This game will allow us to work out where we can improve.
“We did everything we wanted to in the summer, which is huge. The players trained with continuity. It’s clear that, today, we got the answers on their own, which tell us where we can do a lot better; we saw that.
“This will really help us to be more precise in our work. But the new guys have come in with a lot of enthusiasm. These are talented players. They don’t need time to develop, they’re ready because they’ve played for good teams and have a lot of experience.
“Of course they’ll need time to adapt to such a unique and difficult league. They’re showing the right attitude, hunger and spirit. The whole team needs to learn certain patterns of play and work hard.
“Once this side learns to make sacrifices without the ball, we’ll be a top team because with the ball we’re great.
“The secret is always teamwork. The secret is always to play for your team-mates, make sacrifices, run harder, especially with such a talented squad. We have some lovely footballers, who know how to score and dribble. This will be our end product.
“We can be a team that scores and creates many chances. The aim now is to improve our build-up play and be compact without the ball so that we don’t concede many goals. You can only win things if we score a lot but concede very little.
“In terms of our balance on the ball, I don’t think we let them counter effectively. This means that we were organised. We like to be fluid in our build-up and when we lose the ball, some players might need to act in the position they find themselves.
“So, a full-back might end up in midfield and the centre-back is a bit more open. It’s not possibly to be fully balanced at this point. The friendlies gave us an indication and we worked on that, but it’s really these matches which tell us which direction we are going.
“Without the ball today, especially in the first half, I think our timing was a bit off and that means that we weren’t as compact and we need to work on that.”
