AC Milan head coach Sergio Conceicao is just hours away from naming his first starting line-up, with Juventus the opponents tonight in the Supercoppa Italiana.
Conceicao has not had much time to work with the team having only been announced as the new coach on December 29, but in his pre-match press conference he made it clear that he does not see that as an excuse.
We previewed tonight’s game in Riyadh, breaking down the opponents Juventus and also the key players to watch in the game, while the latest team news has come from the papers this morning.
La Gazzetta dello Sport’s predicted XIs
Milan will be without three forwards for the game, which depletes the depth available. Noah Okafor and Samuel Chukwueze have stayed in Italy, while Rafael Leao is with the squad but not back for the Juve game.
The paper believe that Mike Maignan will have a back four of Emerson Royal, Fikayo Tomori, Malick Thiaw and Theo Hernandez ahead of him.
Then, there will be a midfield three of Ismael Bennacer, Youssouf Fofana and Tijjani Reijnders from right to left. Completing the team in attack are the returning Christian Pulisic, Alvaro Morata and Alex Jimenez.
Predicted Milan XI (4-3-3): Maignan; Emerson Royal, Gabbia, Thiaw, Theo; Bennacer, Fofana, Reijnders; Pulisic, Morata, Jimenez.
Predicted Juventus XI (4-2-3-1): Di Gregorio; Savona, Gatti, Kalulu, Cambiaso; Locatelli, Thuram; Conceicao, Koopmeiners, Yildiz; Vlahovic.
Emerson though…
Hopefully Conceicao sees that Calabria is better and pushes for him to sign a new contract
I’d rather see Abraham start than Morata.
Why would you remove Gabbia from the lineup? I get that Conceicao probably wants a higher defensive line, but Tomo being so much better at it than “much slower” Gabbia has proven to be a myth. If anything, he is more reckless, much like Pavlovic. Apparently, he can’t function without either an experienced parter (Kjaer/Romagnoli), or a better version of himself (Kalulu). He is capable of a great game sometimes, but the continuity simply isn’t there anymore. If one thing worked under Fonseca lately, it was the CB partership between Thiaw and Matteo.
Tomori isn’t a great defender, his positioning and defensive awareness is not good but to day that Kalulu is a better version of Tomori is ridiculous.
Tomori was the only constant from all the players you mentioned. Kjaer got injured and got old. Romagnoli was injured and left, Kalulu was good for about 4 months and lost his spot to Thiaw. What better version?
Stop buying the media hype and watch Kalulu during games. He is at fault for most of the goals juve has given up this season.
🤣🤣🤣 Kalulu a better version of Tomori?!?!
I don’t know that it would actually work, but at this point I would think about using either Tomori or Pavlovich as a RB, and accept the trade-off that a solid stay at home RB would at least free-up our RW to be more attack-minded, even if we’ll lose the offensive RB threat.
The first half of season stats were recently released and I think it was telling that even with time missed, Pulisic was #4 on the team for TACKLES, and it’s more about his having to track back to cover for Royale than because of his “unbelevable work” in the press.
Just a thought. I’d also like to see if Jiminez can be effective at RB.
Happy New Year!