Pioli offers possible reason for Milan’s injury woes and discusses tactical shake-ups

AC Milan head coach Stefano Pioli believes that the compact schedule is what has caused the team to come down with quite so many injuries.

There are a number of players that Pioli cannot call upon at the moment as Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Alessandro Florenzi, Davide Calabria and Alexis Saelemaekers are out until after the world cup while Simon Kjaer, Mike Maignan and Junior Messias are also missing.

A number of teams have now started to suffer a bit from injury problems but it does always seem as if the Rossoneri come off comparatively worse than their rivals. For example, Chelsea had essentially a fully fit squad to choose from in midweek.

Pioli spoke to the reporters who gathered in the conference room at Milanello to preview tomorrow’s game and he was asked about the injury crisis the team have found themselves in, with his comments relayed by MilanNews and translated below.

“There has never been such a dense season. Muscle injuries have increased by 20%. Unfortunately we have also had injuries in the national team. I work with important professionals, we will try to do better,” he said.

“The line-up I choose tomorrow morning, yesterday who played in London had an unloading session. I think Giroud is fine, then I’ll see what to choose. We must not forget that we have many games in the next few days.

“In every match we change something, tomorrow will be a different match too. Tomorrow we will prepare things to put Juventus in difficulty, who are conceding few goals.”