After the disappointing 1-0 loss against Udinese, AC Milan manager Stefano Pioli spoke to the media about the performance and what went wrong. He admitted that they need to be worried about the recent displays.
Milan are now on a four-game winless streak, finding the back of the net in just one of those games (2-2 against Napoli). PSG are up next and the Rossoneri will be heading into that crucial challenge low on self-esteem, which is far from ideal.
Speaking to Sky after tonight’s loss, as cited by MilanNews, Pioli shared his thoughts on the game and the recent negative results. He stated that the team didn’t do what was planned, adding that the whistles from the fans were justified.
On the performance…
“We didn’t play the match that we could and wanted to play. We struggled and lost clarity as well as quality. There was too much confusion this evening. We should be worried about the results and the match tonight. Clearly, it didn’t go as it should have. We knew it could be rough and we also had some situations: but that can’t be an excuse. It wasn’t an up-to-par performance. We need to change the course immediately.”
PSG up next…
“Better or worse, we have to face them and we only have one result in mind. We will have to play a great match in all aspects because we will face a strong opponent. After a disappointment like this, it is better to face a match of this magnitude.”
On Jovic…
“He’s a striker who’s good at holding the ball and distributing for others. In the first half, we needed to open them up a little more. It’s also the first game he’s played from start and I don’t think we lost and played poorly because of Jovic. Today we all played poorly. The longer the match went on the more we lost confidence and quality”
With frequent tactical changes, is a centre-forward missing?
“I’m sure I have important characteristics at my disposal in the attacking department. Today I made a different choice than usual due to the absences of Pulisic and Chukwueze. I’m sure that we have an attacking department that can allow us to be more dangerous than we were tonight. We have to do much better. The boos and whistles from the fans are right, especially towards me.”
On Ibrahimovic and environmental problems…
“I believe that many conversations that are made, and rightly so, are almost all aimed at results. Until ten days ago, no one was talking about the absence of the club or that Pioli was alone. I focus on the pitch and we can definitely do better there. I’m focusing on the level of play that needs to improve and which can’t be the same as tonight. As for the rest, you know how Zlatan thinks, how the club is working with me. I have everything to work well and if the results don’t come it means that I have to work better and that the responsibilities are mine. I take responsibility.”
Several of the Milan players performed below their usual standards tonight and you can read our player ratings here. It remains to be seen if there will be any other tactical changes for the game against PSG on Tuesday, but at this point it might not even help.
Pioli is history
He can’t upgrade the team
Of the starting 11 we missed an out of form theo and pulisic.
And he went and changed the whole thing. For what? More attacking power? To be more dangerous?
This isn’t fifa manager
The change in formation should have helped the team, and made a lot of sense on paper!
Is that his fault? To see key players missing and try and help those he has?
DUH its his fault.
and no, the change made 0 sense
“We struggled and lost clarity as well as quality”.
I knew he was going to throw in those two words, clarity and quality, whatever they mean for him. I don’t think the players even get it.
Yeah , you’ll take responsibility alright
“lost clarity as well as quality”
Lost? You can’t lose something you didn’t have in the first place.
At least we can see someone wanted to sack him… His staying back is our loss. Poor man management, poor tactics, miserable performance in UCL. Krunic will still play with a broken foot.
Mihailovic, God rest his soul, would have played the U-18 chap today.
Pioli is on fire 🔥… Yeah right.
No Baldie, don’t take responsibility.
We ‘played better’ than udinese for 50 minutes
“We struggled and lost clarity as well as quality”
Ffs of course you did when you suddenly changed formation, and on top of that, with 2 strikers of the same type
Scudetto was his peak. He will never be able to reach any higher.
Time to let pioli go.
Damn right you do! I usually don’t just up and blame the coach but today I’m firmly in the #Poiliout camp! Why not prepare the team to face a guaranteed low block? Anyone who remotely knows football would have wagered Udinese were not coming to the san siro to play out of their half, anyone except our head coach that is…Why the formation change to such a foreign formation as a 442? Why play 2 upfront and sacrifice 3 whole players (incl. Leao) in the defensive phase? Why not start Adli and Krunic both in a Double pivot and shift Reijnders wide right? Why Not start Okafor upfront in a 4-3-2-1 and rest Giroud for our must win in 4 days against a PSG that thrashed us away? Why not acknowledge the fans that bought tickets, that sat in rain and gave up their Saturday night for such a tepid performance? Surely, we have to be honest here, Pioli can be a coach and leader or we might as well prepare to slide back to our banter years again! Horrible performance! F*ck it, Pioli Out!!!!!
Where’s that Boulden guy or Maldini Heir who were defending Pioli and everything Milan were doing. Oh we only 3 points off top don’t be so negative blah blah blah…no where to be seen!
Are you seriously suggesting we sack the manager of the third placed team?
As before there’s a really simple solution for you. Inter are top right. So if you now start supporting Inter you can support the top team. And then when they lose the top spot you can support whoever replaces them.
That way you never need to experience disappointment or other feelings.
That is your argument? Really? If you don’t like it support another team? What are you 5?
You’re like a child that stick his fingers in his ears and goes “LA LA LA LA LA! I can’t hear you… LA LA LA LA!” because he knows he is wrong, but doesn’t want to hear the other sides arguments.
Completely useless.
Well it’s my argument with someone who is seriously suggesting sacking the coach of the third placed team…
third place and about to be dumped out of the group stage of the CL and mabe even miss the europa league…..yes people do suggest we dump the average at best coach
Question for Maldinis Heir, how far do you need to slip down the table before you fire 🔥 the coach.
@ Milan Fan As long as we’re striking distance of the champions league.
And if Pioli goes Cardinale and the others need to join him.
Question for everyone – anyone think they got a little carried away over this summer’s transfers???
So we should wait for the ship to completely sink before doing something ?
“We are third”, we were first about 3 weeks ago, now we’re 6 points behind the leader.
Maldinis Heir must be looking for some kind of attention or he’s drifted into Fantasyland. Everyone else sees it’s the performance, he just looks at the league position.
He’s lucky Giancarlo isn’t on here anymore!
Just hush idiot. Pioli clearly needs to go. Too stubborn to let go of his tactics and its costing big time. He stands no chance of outfitting PSG midweek. He couldn’t even outwit a winless team fighting relegation. Hush
With fans like you….
Please explain why Pioli is awesome after this? Are you in love? Is your name
Rade? Just stop dude, you’re embarrassing yourself, Udinese’s first win and you’re still defending Pioli, it’s sad. Real Milan fans deem this unacceptable, so enough with the “you’re not a fan” bs. Wake up
0 goals in past 5 CL games
0 wins in CL this season
0-2-1 last three Serie A games.
Blew a 2 goal lead to Napoli and lose to winless Udinese
5-1 loss to Inter
Hope you’re happy loser
I 100% agree with Kaka below. I have been a supporter of pioli since the beginning but he is now out of his depth. It’s up for him. As people say, how far does the ship need to sink? Last week 3 points off top. This week 3rd place. Next week 6th place and so on. And you will still support the incompetence.
Grow up and become a real fan. Telling people to switch teams. It’s because I care about this team I have these views so shut up and go home mate.
A 3rd place team lost 5-1 to their rival, 3-0 in Champion League, and just lost to the 16th team on the table. What other feelings could we experience beside disappointment. The point is you doesn’t give a valid argument. I’m not saying sacking him right now is the right thing to do, but he clearly doesn’t do his job well.
3rd in table with 3 losses 1 draw in the last 4 matches. And soon to be 4 losses in 5 matches (hope not). And the more we see the recent matches, the more we the loss of identity and unity of this team. That’s not a good sign for a coach, moreover for someone who had been fully supported for his fetishism on the last window.
if you cant see why we need to sack him then its better to stay silent and listen to what people with half a brain say/write. You might learn something
I haven’t seen Boulden and Tjoke today, they are the biggest Pioli and Krunic defenders. I am waiting for them to write some bull$crap to defend this loss.
The autist and giancarlo. What a duo. We’re gonna be witness to ocean of wisdom once they charge up their el devices
Promote Ignazio Abate to Replace Idiot Pioli. So he could go with his lovely BF Krunic and Maldinis Heir
I’m embarrassing myself by saying we shouldn’t sack the coach when we’re still third?
This is the level we’re dealing with these days. People with the patience of toddlers.
Should we have sacked Pioli after lost 5:0 to Atalanta?
Might have missed out on a Scudetto. Thankfully there were calmer heads in charge back then.
There’s definitely a lot of venting going on this site after a loss.
Sacking Pioli is an ADL move, or even a bottom half team move. There isn’t anyone available to take over the reigns. Nor would a respectable coach want to take over a club mid season.
So for better or worse we are in bed with Pioli until the summer. I’m hoping he steadies the ship, maybe even with Ibra’s help. But his deficiencies are becoming more evident and are harder to ignore with performances like this… one can only hope this game will serve as that infamous Atalanta defeat omen.
There is half a dozen coaches available. Some will ask for more €€€ than cheap Milan will pay tho
Have they actually won anything???
Or are fans just looking for a change because they can’t sit still?
Oc they have. Way more than pioli. Who is finished. The only question is how far will we sink before they cut him lose. 6 points. 9. 12. 15
Pioli has a history of getting teams performing and then running out of ideas.
It’s what happened at Lazio and Inter. He’d finally broken that run at Milan but all things come to an end eventually.
Now is probably not the time though given the season is going almost as expected (I can’t believe anyone actually thought we’d definitely make it through our champions league group).
The way we play against newcastle. They just lucky that time. Im surprised that u think newcastle and dortmund were better than us. At least we have a better market value than dortmund. Im not saying pioli not doing ok, but i think our team would have done better with a smarter coach. We all know the scudetto belong to zlatan and never been piolis
Wait…you sound like maybe you changing your attitude? You sure you want to carry on supporting Milan?
This game is all about results, not what you’ve done in the past.
Luckily the present has us in third place….
Has a coach ever been sacked for being third???
We’ve had quite a few of those Atalanta omens @ ACM 1899, with no response thus far… We are reaching breakpoint…
The day that i see a different coach on that bench will be a blessed day. Im not a coach by any means, but come on everyone can see that we can’t build anything in the mid of the field, always give the ball to leao or puli and hope they create something. What has pioli done to fix that? Obsolutly nothing. Still plays krunic who can’t pass, open up play. Sees that reinders has been poor for some time now and still does nothing to fix it. The guy is tired and needs a break, on top of that maybe he needs support on top to help with creativity. Baldie gotta go
We all know Pioli’s limitations. This season they are on display more than ever unfortunately. Whereas before he had the players buying into it and masking some of his deficiencies, this season that seems to be happening less. And there’s more vocalization of it. There is a reason our Prime players are dropping in form – Leao, Theo for example. Since the PSG loss, there’s a psychological break, even though they played a fantastic 45 against Napoli. But it started going down hill after. Now combine that with poor European form, unclear tactics and a whole lot of Pioli, and it seems we are heading towards another mid season slump (like last January). That is dangerous waters.
To win the league you should finish at 2 to 3 losses in total for the season…this is Not promising…To be in 3rd place after 3 losses means your biggest opponents are fluffing their chances…not a time to be squandering yours. To lose to a team that hasn’t won a game…not inspiring. Milan is losing the plot…we now question whether the issue of depth has been adequately addressed during the mercato…Do we have the material to tackle this season…debatable. One thing is for sure is that the team does not have an identity, their final 3rd play is atrocious, team doesn’t play as a unit and they don’t look like there is a game plan. And for that I pin it on the back of the coach. Is he a spent force that needs to be relieved of his duties or are there other workings at play that need to be addressed…Time will tell, and that is a luxury that we don’t have.
Perché perdiamo sempre la nostra “chiarezza e fiducia”? Se sa di essere responsabile perché insiste a restare nonostante non solo i risultati, ma soprattutto lo stile di gioco. Non ha davvero più nulla da dimostrarci.
“I have everything to work well and if the results don’t come it means that I have to work better and that the responsibilities are mine. I take responsibility.”
I hope all PioliFanBoy read this…
So stop defending him by blaming players for bad performance or injury or other bla bla bla..
Face it,your Pioli is currently failed to improve the team.. stop asking absurd questions
Why is anyone who defends their own manager and player a ‘fan boy’?
Actually all this ‘fan boy’ stuff strongly points to a lack of independent thought. People who use the same terminology think the same like religious people.
Name one coach in history who has been sacked when his team was third in the league?
Let me answer your question with a question. Name one coach with this squad depth managing top five teams of any competive league in Europe, that for almost two seasons now, lacks any clear and consistent formation, poor team management, zero motivation and enthusiasm with poor teamperformance results on display?
It is clear for us all to see Pioli is not the coach for Milan, last season we blame some of the players and we got some good players as replacement, even though some of us knew Pioli’s tactics were lucky dip at best. Now we have these new players and our coach has demonstrated weekly that he lacks the tactical abilities to deal with this squad depth and consistently get positive results, show determination, motivation and enthusiasm to win a game.
It is painful and an eye sore to watch Milan play like this and lose a game that we shouldn’t even draw.
Maybe the PSG game this Tuesday will convince those Milan fans still in Pioli’s camp that he needs to be sacked and that he has done all that he could’ve done for Milan.
Negelsman
SRAMOTA VELIKA IZGUBIT DOMA OD UDINESEA !!!