Sassuolo boss Dionisi explains rather simple instruction given to beat Milan

By Oliver Fisher -

Sassuolo head coach Alessio Dionisi has revealed that he was targeting a couple of approaches in particular to try and beat AC Milan, both of which worked perfectly.

It was a simply disastrous 90 minutes for Milan as they followed up defeats against Lazio and Inter – in which they let in seven goals without scoring – by conceding five goals against a relegation battling Sassuolo side.

In the first half the Neroverdi scored hree times in 11 minutes through Gregoire Defrel, Davide Frattesi and Domenico Berardi to go in 3-1 up at the break, and then Armand Lauriente netted a penalty just after the interval to make it 4-1, and Matheus Henrique added a five before Divock Origi’s consolation made it 5-2.

Dionisi spoke in the conference room at the San Siro immediately after his side secured a memorable result, with his comments relayed by MilanNews.

Is it the best day of your sporting career?

“We don’t regret not being on the left side of the table, we’ve changed a lot. We need to roll up our sleeves and understand it quickly. The last two games have said something different in terms of determination and will. After a 2-5 draw against Milan, I can say that this team has the ability to play, but what makes the difference is the spirit on the pitch, which is not taken for granted.

“The most beautiful? I’m young, so I hope not. I’ll leave it to others to tell. Last year we beat 6 of the top 8, but then we finished 12th: for me it is more valuable to win more games than to beat a big club.”

What happened in the last two games?

“I teased the team a bit. In Monza we were different compared to other times. Today the match was more balanced than what the result said. I hope these are the right signals that give us humility and awareness looking at the the standings.”

Frattesi is enthralling…

“Many played an important game today, I also mentioned Marchizza today and with Rogerio on the right who is a left-footed player. Today we played, we had courage at the San Siro against Milan, we were determined.

“Frattesi must keep going like this, he will have the opportunity to grow and have different experiences, but he must continue. He too has had ups and downs, we can’t afford to have him up and down. I understand that playing against Milan is one thing and against Borgosesia it is another, but it shouldn’t change anything.”

How did you put Milan in difficulty?

“We wanted to put them in difficulty on the counter-attack, knowing that Milan attack with many players, and with men between the lines.”

Tags AC Milan Alessio Dionisi

5 Comments

  1. I think Dionisi noted it right. Milan attacked with many players, sometimes I think most of our defenders are a tad too eager to participate.

    While Theo has been dialling down his forward runs, either because he’s exhausted/out of form or by design, Calabria on the other hand ran around like headless chicken. To make things worse, he’s the captain. He should be the one setting example and showing discipline. When your right back captain sometimes occupy Giroud’s position, what do you think would happen to the rest of the team?

    This problems are magnified this season due to the lack of presence of a combative and ball winning midfielder. Kessie was great, despite losing interest in his last season with us. But still, it was quite enough to shore up holes that were left behind by (usually) Theo. Calabria used to be a lot more disciplined and hard to get beat one-on-one. Now he got skinned on every games.

    The other issue would be goalkeeper. With Maignan, the problem is somewhat overlooked as Maignan commands his penalty box well and he isn’t afraid to come up and play a la Neuer as sweeper, acting like our 11th outfield player. His distribution is also good and accurate, enabling us to build the attack way high up in the field.

    I think while Maignan is out and we still hasn’t shore up our midfield/defence, it would be much better to play a little less attacking and focus on defending first. We can’t win a game when every opponent’s shot on goals resulted in goal..

  2. “…knowing that Milan attack with many players…”

    Istn’t this repeating problem due to Pioli’s stubborn tactics?

    Isn’t this Pioli’s problem by not recognising the problem and keeping on pouring players foward while leaving behind space wide open?

  3. We are simply in a bad spell due to exhaustion. Everything is going wrong which is having an affect on the whole squad. We need a bit of confidence back.

    We wil come good and finish in the top 4

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