Stefano Pioli has once again ended up in the dock after his decision to field an entirely rotated starting line-up barring Mike Maignan resulted in more dropped points against Bologna.
If Milan do not finish in the top four at the end of the season, it will be due – at least in part – to Pioli’s choices. That may sound like an obvious statement, but it is far from it. The ups and downs in the league had a very precise and much more classifiable distribution of blame compared to today, it could be said.
Firstly, the inadequate first two transfer windows (both in the summer and in January) under RedBird Capital deserve scrutiny. Then the players are to blame too, in particular the subdued performance of several Scudetto heroes such as Fikayo Tomori, Pierre Kalulu, Rafael Leao, Ismael Bennacer and Theo Hernandez.
In the eyes of some, that meant that Pioli’s methods and his work are last in terms of the portion of blame taken up in this hypothetical trial.
Things have changed
After today, however, things are quite different. Eight months on from the start of the season, the performance of the strongest players present in the squad has definitely grown and even the ‘wounds’ linked to the subdued transfer market should have been cauterised by time and the experience of the new arrivals. Alas, this is not the case.
In the eyes of Pioli, the reserve options don’t really exist except in cases like Empoli and Bologna today, or when the owners – squeezed to capacity in all the other matches – have to catch their breath before the big match on the most important stage.
This is testified by the minutes played by certain players this season. Florenzi, Thiaw and Ballo-Touré together (1506′) barely reach half of the minutes spent on the pitch by Theo Hernandez alone (3001′).
It is even more serious in midfield. When adding together the minutes played by Vranckx and Pobega so far this season (1037′), you get just one third of Tonali’s playing time (3106′). In attack Rebic and Origi do not even come close to the minutes played by Giroud (2491′).
It is data that underline how the reserves at Milan do not have – as should happen – playing time spread over the course of the season. Instead, they act as literal substitutes only on occasions such as games against Empoli and Bologna, i.e. ‘buffer’ games before bigger matches.
In this sense Pioli enters into contradiction with himself. ‘We do not underestimate anyone’ is a cliché said by almost all the coaches around the world, and yet the team fielded at the Stadio Renato Dall’Ara today was without even minimum consistency.
A game thrown away
Milan not only underestimated Bologna but, as happened with Empoli, overestimated themselves. This is because fourth place – decidedly more feasible than a final victory in the Champions League – is not a secondary goal but the only one left.
Ten changes were made. Every single outfield player did not start the game against Napoli in midweek, and many have them have not started more than a handful of games all season.
This is not rationalised rotation: it is a pre-announced surrender. Fourth place is worth as much (if not more) than Napoli-Milan, yet
Pioli’s mistake was to trust in the second lines when he has demonstrated over the course of a whole season through his administration of minutes and appearances that they are not trusted.
What happened today in Bologna is instead a force dictated by fear: playing with players who are now ‘lost’ can only bring you closer to defeat. The performance might not have been terrible yet falling behind inside the first minute made the game uphill and it was due to a lack of attention.
Now fourth place – Milan’s real and only goal this season – is an open battle with three other clubs which have had the ability to build a group made up of 22 players and not just 11.
All of the comments and anlyses of today are missing the main thing, at least according to me.
You all claim guys that finishing Top 4 is more important than Napoli v Milan on Tuesday.
How do you know that?
Pioli has a boss. If Top 4 is more important than Napoli v Milan on Tuesday, don’t all of you think that today he would have fielded more starters?
It’s obvious there is also direction from above to prioritize doing our best to go to the UCL semis. Pioli is not stupid for sure, he realizes 100% that starting this XI away to an in-form team placed 8th would not be favorites to win the game.
We throw everything on Tuesday, we hopefully qualify, get millions of euros for the semis appearance, where unless you have forgotten, we will play Inter, and not Real Madrid nor Man City.
And how do you know Milan can’t win the UCL? If we get to the semis and eliminate our cousins, it’s one game. Anything can happen. Have you all lost your belief?
Does anyone have an example of when the whole team was rested before a big game, in a situation where the actual game in which they were rested also had importance? Just one example please.
Did Pioli just outthhink every other manager?
Reminds me of that Simsons meme: “Am I out of touch? No, it’s the others who are wrong”
The commentator here said it had happened once before with Milan. Something like 20 years ago against Juve – before the UCL final (can’t remember which one though).
I heard about that, but it was the last league game, without importance.
I like it.
It shows Pioli has balls and also believes in winning the CL. Both Inter and Benfica are opponents Milan can beat and in a final anything can happened on a good day.
But to answer your question no i dont think i ever seen this before.
First and foremost, this is a great write-up. Kudos for the SempreMilan team. Showing the paradoxical side of Pioli. Who always say things like ‘We have 20 something starters’, ‘We’d field the best line up for the game’, yada yada, where in fact he seems to only trust certain faces and also only got results when he fielded those faces. He maybe the one who knows best about the discrepancy of our first team and the ‘other’ is just simply too high.
Yes, I know he’s kind of ‘Yes-man’ kind of manager, that’s why the management loves him so much to begin with. But knowing his reserve couldn’t do much (that’s why they rarely play in the first place), combined with knowing that we still desperately need points in the league, is just seem to paradoxical decision to make that heavy rotation.
I’m just sincerely hoping these couple of decisions won’t hunt us down once we’ve done with the season.
In regard of florenzii, thiaw and ballo toure it would be expected to be fair as florenzi was injured untill february. The only reason why we loaned dest was in fact because florenzi was injured by the way,
Hamstring Injury Aug 29, 2022 Feb 28, 2023 183 days
so kinda a fallacy to claim that but overall i do agree though that pioli should show more trust in his entire squad but looking at the fans of the club he is damned if he do and damned if he doesnt because there isnt much patience when people doesnt perform to begin with.
We deserved to win and we clearly played better than them but they got a lucky start and we was cheated of two penalties so its not as simple as things are painted in this article as i see it BUT i do agree nevertheless that pioli should rotate better than he does.
This is false logic article. So Pioli did big mistake not rotating players frequently. We can see numbers of player spent on pitch…
Owners logic is bring young cheap and win 4th position. What is coach to blame with transfer market setting ?
So should owner logic be correct?
For example: why wouldn’t all teams in serie a bring young and cheap players and run for 4th position? It is not happening because it is false logic.
Than, if you have team that reach quarter finals in champions league, you made big success, financially also. But you don’t expect them to be best in 4th position in serie a in the same time, without very good backup roster.
Cardinale deserves to lose at least 120 million next year from champions league, that milan won this year, because he was very cheap bstardo, who spent only 32 million on very young prospective player and nothing more…
In the last summer window we were interested in Kolo Muani, Enzo, Renato Sanchez, Botman, Asensio, etc and what we get was Dest, CDK, Thaiw, Vrancx, Pobega and Origi. Except for Thaiw all of them are flops. Just compare is from Napoli and Roma. How their new signings have impacted their performance. I don’t even know who is at fault for this, but if it continues for the next summer window to we might not even be playing in the confrence league after the next season.
I’m so sick of fans complaining about owners not spending enough (and keeping the club solvent).
If you don’t like it go support PSG.
Bro the blame has to go on someone if we don’t finish top 4 and you can either blame the owners or the manager and for me Pioli is not to be blamed coz if he doesn’t have a squad at his disposal that can be rotated how are we gonna expect him to be consistent in both the champions league and Serie A. If you give a squad like this even to the best coaches around the world they won’t be up to something good either.
Because money is finite.
Plus he does have the squad at his disposal.
This squad could end up in the top 4 in Europe a season after winning the title last and still people will say: “we need E15b spent on this time, here’s my list of fantasy footballers”.
What is the point of supporting a football team if all you do is want the team to change?
It’s not really a team, is it?
More a brand name.
You support the Milan brand like you support the McDonald’s brand and the Apple brand. How bloody superficial.
Maldinis Heir how do you expect to win without investing in the club.
We won the title last season and are in the quarter finals of the Champions League. There’s only 3 teams that have done that in the last two seasons and we’re one of them. Milan fans, Man City fans and Bayern fans are the luckiest fans in Europe right now.
I support the actual team that I’m watching rather than spending the whole time pining for an entirely different team, and playing fantasy football.
This is the exact problem with modern football fans. They’re just pointless.
“Fourth place is worth as much (if not more) than Napoli-Milan”
This. Pioli is delusional and thinks winning the UCL is easier than finishing in TOP4 in Serie A. He only thinks about this season and doesn’t care about **** about the next. It sure looks like a plan for a coach about to leave the sinking ship or something. Without UCL next season Milan won’t get ANY reinforcements – only leftover players such as Origi. And Theo & Leao wants to leave to play UCL instead of EL. No one can blame them.
Finishing in the TOP4 is absolutely crucial to the club yet Pioli couldn’t care less about the Serie A. F’ng idiot!
Nothing Pioli does can work, can he? When he plays Giroud 3 games a week, you complain that he’s not rotating, when he rotates and we don’t make it, it’s his fault for rotating at all.
Speaking of contradictions, Oli wrote just yesterday:
“Moreover, between the kick-off at the Dall’Ara and that of […] the second leg of the quarter-finals, there is a gap of 78 hours. That means that games are coming at a fast pace and Stefano Pioli will have to take it into account.”
Well… he has taken it into account.
Of course, no one is happy with this draw, and we are disappointed. But Pioli did the right thing. These players are human beings, not machines. Now, are we missing out on the top 4? We’re still 8 games away and that is more than enough.
Finally, I hope no one is going to understate the importance of Tuesday’s game. We’re just a draw away from a semi-final of UCL, potentially with both legs at the San Siro. We beat Inter before. We beat Napoli twice this season. Financially, that’s 12.5M plus 15.5M if we reach the final. Whoever we play on that day is the only team left to beat.
Pioli has to play players a minimum of games per year based on the total amount of competitive games played by the team during the season or they can have their contracts rescinded by just cause. He has to play players even if he doesn’t want to, thus he needs to pick his spots as to when it will be benificial. We have other, tougher league games in a stacked schedule. He did the right thing by rotating his players. It isn’t just about what game he wants us to win but also the health of his best players. If our best starters were injured in a game against Bologna heading into a CL game, we would never hear the end of it.
inter 0-1 monza
Caldirola, one of Inter’s former youth players scored the only goal of the game off a header on top of that, with Berlusconi’s team to keep us in our CL position, speaking of ironic
i quite enjoyed it i watched the last 25 minutes and monza did good besides of the win.
also seeing galliani in the stands quietly celebrating was nice as well-
did the monza fans sing the interista vaffanculo song by the way , thought i caught up on that 😀
They tied Inter as well earlier this season. We definitely owe them a nod for that. I was working so I couldn’t watch the games unfortunately. I was following the scores though
they also had valotti in the team former milan youth player who was brought jin from albinoleffe in 12 -14 or something (estimate from top head) pessina and didnt see petagna but also old milan player.
Personally i cheered on them nearly as muchb as if they was milan but just in the sense that thety would kick theiur arses 😀 The minutes i watched monza played fairly aggressive, not in a vile way but aggressively forcing inter to make mistakes.
another time watch hesgoal or rojadirecta if u cant find a way to watch the matches u want to see.
How on earth that we’re still 4th? 😂
What an odd season.
I wonder what kind of ideology and perception Italian coaches have. Pioli knows nothing like motivation of players and that he has trust over certain players. As a coach, every player is worth playing for the team determining the type of tournament. You can’t benched a player for half a season and expect him to perform miracle when called upon.
This was a fun article to read, and it gives a little insight to the rotation and integration issues that Pioli has found himself in, but the moment that you make statements like….
“Milan not only underestimated Bologna but, as happened with Empoli, overestimated themselves”.
“What happened today in Bologna is instead a force dictated by fear”
“Now fourth place – Milan’s real and only goal this season”
“This is not rationalised rotation: it is a pre-announced surrender”.
…..I can only classify this piece as gaslighting.
Everyone deserves scrutiny but Pioli has lost the plot! I want to shout “top four is our scudetto” at him.
Easy guys. We need our starters to be there full power against Napoli..
Then Inter also lose to monza. So we are on track
Origi and CDK, plus Toure, Florenzi plays like an ass to be honest lol
Negative article.
We played better than Bologna and deserved to win. There should have been a foul called on Ballo Toure before they scored.
Pioli did the right thing resting our players. We need to be realistic about our squad in that we do not have the depth of the big UCL or even EPL squads across Europe. We are a work in progress.
I personally am 100% ok if we drop out of the top 4 as long as we give it our all to go as far as possible in the CL because at the moment we have an absolutely fantastic chance to make the final. Once we are in the final it’s anyones game and everyone is underestimating us just like last season in the run in to the campionato.
I agree it’s an unnecessarily negative article but then you go on about being “realistic” with our poor little squad.
We don’t have the depth of the other Champions League teams?
We have a squad of 30!
Man City play Stones in 3-4 positions but Milan need 3 players for every position.
And if our squad is so pathetic then that makes it even more idiotic to rest the entire team. With such a puny squad
You misunderstand what I mean by depth. We have 2 players for each position but our 2nd choice for each position is a clear downgrade.
Man city have depth in that they have 2 starting quality players for each position.
Depth is quality not quantity.
And yet City play with their best eleven even before CL games. Why do you think that is?
It’s not a downgrade.
We don’t have a clue what level the reserve players are because they need to play.
Plus as pointed out above only Man City and Bayern have won titles last season and made the quarter finals of the champions league this.
We live in a world where people give more importance to computer game ratings than actual real life.l
” played better than X and deserved to win” means ABSOLUTELY NOTHING in sports. No one remembers that next month. Or next year. Only the points matter. And we dropped another 2. AGAIN.
Like peoples collective memory matters, what matters ius that we was cheated of two penalty kicks and that their goal shouldnt count to begin with.
Had we won then pioli would have been praised for his bravery but instead we didnt and now he is the villain.
BS
Stop using Origi again. He is finished. It’s better to use Rebic. Rebic is not a good dribbler so he doesn’t suit for LW. But he is fast, a good finisher and good in the air, so he fits for the CF. Try CDK as LW. He is not fast but a good dribbler, passer and vision.
Pioli’s main problem is, he tooks too long to make decision about player’s best position. It happens to Diaz who re-birth when move to RW
It’s not pioli’s fault when the second string players are not up to scratch. First of all, we need a new Milan owner who is not a venture capitalist. Then I’d sell all players from the last match except for Maignan, Thiaw, Kalulu, Saelemakers, Pobega, Messias, Diaz, Calabria and Leao. Then buy quality players to replace those sold. Done.
It’s Pioli’s job to win games. He declared it himself too 4 is everything. He needs to pick the squad that will get points or at least be bold enough to try new solutions to old problems. Pioli is one dimensional and predictable the two worst qualities in a manager. I’m grateful for his work but at this point his limits are clear…
They’re not up to scratch because they never play. It’s like going back to work after a holiday. It takes a little time to get going. Well professional football players have to do that at the highest levels imaginable where a split second makes all the difference.
And you can’t criticise owners for not spending money. Football is not some bloody game of Monopoly (or rather shouldn’t be). If all you care about is money go support PSG.
The only criticism I could make of the transfers was just how many players did we need to sign!!
Even having swapped out the entire team there were still squad players on the bench like Gabbia, Dest, Bakayoko, Adli and even Ibra.
We have a squad of 30 compared to Man City’s 23.
What exactly are doing paying these salaries?
People say Dest was necessary when Florenzi got injured – but was he?
If Florenzi had got injured a week later we’d not have been able to sign anyone. The only reason we signed Dest was because the transfer window was option.
We could’ve made do with Calabria and Kalulu. Kalulu could’ve played CB and RB like Stones does in that terribly under-resourced Man City team.
But it was this absolute obsession with the transfer market and having 2 perfect players for every position.
The result is we went for quantity over quality. It’d be better to have a world beating 11 and 5-6 players pushing through. The rest can be made up of youth and older players.
If a player like Adli can’t get a game just how far off are youth players? They must be buried 5-6 bodies deep.
Primavera players must be thinking there’s no point. Not even Maldini’s son stands a chance (we won’t see him next season he’ll be loaned out again) as we replace CDK and Adli with 2 loaned players with options to buy to ensure maximum instability.
It’s just a mess. It’s not about individual players. The starting 11 against Bologna did quite well. But no player can perform in this crowded an environment. It’s like bringing together 30 of the best cooks to cook one broth. They’d get in each other’s way and spoil it.
Well said.
I’m sorry, surely I am not the only one who is satisfied with the decision to rotate and we almost came out with the full points?? The plan almost worked to perfection, we rested players, got 3 points and the starting 11 can focus solely for Napoli, going there fully rested against a (relatively) depleted and tired Napoli squad. It was unfortunate with the lack of goals scored, but most of us thought our B team were gonna get thrashed by in form Bologna anyway?! The subs did relatively well, especially after conceding in the first minute! Our January squad would’ve conceded another 4 goals after that, but these guys who had played limited minutes showed grit, chased the game gallantly, only falling short to win it in the end. Not sure if I can diss that effort.
Personally, I’d rather know that we’d give everything we got trying to qualify for the SF, instead of wondering what it could’ve been if we just rest players and preserve our full strength for the difficult trip to Naples. We can still chase top 4 even if we lost against Bologna. Sure it would’ve been an uphill battle, but we got 8 games to do it, and at the rate Inter (form, goal drought) and Roma (inconsistent, injury issues) are going, I’m still pretty confident.
If we can’t even make it to CL at the end of the season, it’s not because we “throw” this Bologna match, but it’s because our horrid 2023 form!
Just my 2cents.
Completely agree!
And to think we didn’t get that pen, Rebic missed that chance that hit off his face, and there were other misses in the box.
It so nearly worked and those players really proved themselves especially Pobega who was awesome!
The great teams pick up most of their points against the weaker teams.
It’s not all about some head to head. Head to heads aren’t going to win titles. It’s beating the minnows that is absolutely key. And you need steamroller those teams. In fact it’s probably important to play full strength teams against the minnows because you can’t afford to drop points in those games and those teams life their games.
At the very least when rotating you need to rotate steadily across the season. There needs to be a core starting 11 and then players rotated when the fixture list becomes more congested preferably with a max of 3-4 swapped out at a time, and the same players covering across multiple positions.
Taking this squad we should be rotating Kjaer, Tomori and Kalulu with the latter also covering for RB, and Calabria covering RB and LB to rest Theo.
Pobega (who I thought was excellent against Bologna) should be covering across the midfield three and Rebic across the front three with Saelemaekers also coming in.
In the summer the focus should be getting the squad down to a manageable size of about 23 including Gabbia, Pobega, D Maldini and Colombo being used as a back up.
We should get rid of (wait for it):
Tătărușanu
Mirante
Ballo-Touré
Dest
Thiaw
Adli
Bakayoko
Origi
Messias
De Ketelaere
Rebic
(a massive 11 players!)
and replace them with a CF and a creative attacking player and that is it!
We’d have a squad of 23.
One need not be an expert to comment on football. If you are a fan long enough you’ll know some things. Our market was poor to say the least. Certain players were not even needed- Dest, CDK, even Florenzi and Messias were all not needed. People misundertood this as a statement of those players quality and as usual jumped to criticise when some of us made such comments. We simply did not need them.
Clearly there’s a mountain of work for M&M this summer, but then i also believe if Pioli would have played the right formation that best suits his players 4-3-3, that would have been 80% of the problem solved. But as someone rightly commented above, he’s one dimensional and has reached his limits. I personally don’t believe at this point he could do any better with a better squad.
As a fan i hope for the best season finale.
We were saved by Monza.
Does Milan mgmnt give up on Pioli
Get Zerbi know Milan while he is still available
Too many valuable point have been give away this year
Milan are bleeding points
Awful analysis, completely missing the point.
Winning the Ucl final may be near impossible, but PLAYING a final is, in the eyes if Redbird, HUGE.
Young players gaining experience in the greatest match in the world goes a long way to bring the Milan brand to where it belongs. It will help attracts the level of player we need over the summer and it may help in renewals, especially of Leao.
There are also plenty of games to go. Third or fourth mean very little, and against Bologna, fielding the players whose heads are ready on the Napoli match could have led to underestimating the opponent.
CDK, Origi, Pobega, Rebic are all players we expected to be close to the starting 11. Florenzi has played little due to injuries, not lack of trust or performances. Kalulu, Thiaw and Saelemaekers are starters, not subs, on any given day, depending on system tactics and form.
We also played on a par with Bologna, and could have easily won had decisions gone in our favor. We dominated most of the game and should have put away another chance or two.
Pioli was brave to try 10 subs, and he got away with it, in my opinion. We don’t have players who come on and change the game – None of the starters rested have it in them to come off the bench and score a goal. Our attackers are hugely unreliable -CDK, Origi and Vranxx should all at least be hungry and motivated.
attempt to play the final and lose Champions League spot and doesn’t play Champions next season. Redbird will be really happy with that. Play a final means nothing with no champions next season.
Vin, I completely agree with you. There should’ve been a penalty on a handball at the end; their GK made some good saves and we completely dominated the match. If Pioli doesn’t play these guys in a match v a Bologna team who was missing Orsolini, then when will he play them? If the PK is called and we win 2-1 (or if one other bounce went our way), then someone would write an article about how much of a genius Pioli is.
The fact is that there are still 8 matches left to play after Bologna for us to ensure we get top 4. Top 4 is VERY important, OF COURSE; but so is advancing to the semifinals of the CL. It’s huge for marketing, for attracting big players to come to Milan. We easily can still finish top 4 even if we lost to Bologna and the fact is, we at least got a point and played well enough to get 3 points but the ball didn’t bounce our way and ref didn’t call a penalty that he clearly should’ve. Can’t blame Pioli for showing confidence in his players (which also COULD help our team down the stretch if we suffer an injury, a player will have more confidence and may help us win a match late in the season).