AC Milan’s injury problems remain a real negative weight on their season and show no signs of making an improvement, forcing the club to reflect.
This morning’s edition of Tuttosport (via MilanNews) reports that Stefano Pioli and his staff, as well as the club, are working to understand how to resolve the situation, but at the moment there are no positive results in this regard. The front page reads: ‘Too many injuries, Cardinale furious’.
On Sunday the injuries suffered by Tommaso Pobega and Noah Okafor made a great victory for the Rossoneri over Monza a little less sweet. With their respective hip and thigh issues, Milan are now at 29 injuries for the season.
There is a worrying trend too: 21 of these were caused by non-traumatic problems. Therefore, there are 18 muscle injuries and 3 related to a tendon. A busy calendar and also bad luck play a role to some extent, but given the exorbitant numbers further investigation is needed.
To aggravate the situation, there is the fact that this situation linked to physical problems has already existed since Pioli’s first year with the Rossoneri, in the 2020-21 season. Pioli, his staff and all of Milan are of course trying to isolate the problem and solve it. For them, first of all, it is a great limitation not to have the whole team available.
The Rossoneri’s problem in this first part of the season seemed to be never having the full squad. Pioli has confirmed several times that he is working on the problem and also that he has adopted improvements: these have not yet borne fruit and it has to be only a matter of time, otherwise more serious reflections begin.
It seems most likely that there will be an inquest at the end of the current campaign. For someone like Gerry Cardinale, all the players in the squad – especially if you have invested good money on them – are a very important asset and their unavailability certainly does no good.
Although it will be difficult to imagine personnel changes during the current season, it is clear that on this point – if there is no clear reversal of course – either Pioli or some members of his staff risk leaving at the end of the season.
wasnt there supposed to be an inquest or an evaluaton during the last intl break? WTF is everyone doing?
No need for inquest.
By the end of the season Pioli, his staff and everyone involved with athletic strength and conditioning should be fired and the time in between should be used to find qualified professionals that will replaced these people.
Finally. Change the physio staff AND Pioli in the summer. Problem solved.
And replaced by whom???
Maan, nevermind these airheads, who know nothing about football, and can’t see all the great things Pioli has been doing, above all, his man managing skills, and his impressive tactical approach.
But YES! If we were to replace him, the rel question is – with whom?!
Yes, De Zerbi would be ideal, he’s 110& Milanista, but I don’t think he’s gonna want to change EPL, for at least 2 more years. Then, there’s Tiago Motta, but I’m not so sure he’ll come as well, nor that our executives are keen on him that much. And the WORST OPTION EVER, to bring Conte… That’ll be the BIGGEST BLOW to this Milan team one could imagine! With his strict 3-men defense, and playing strictly with wing/backs… None of these idiots ver think what will became f this Milan sqquad, that’s build toplay with 4 men defense! Imagine, Conte would right away put one of Rafa or Theo in the gutter, the same on the right side as well. Won’t even mention the attack, where he always plays with 2 strikers… I mean, it’d be DISASTER, without even starting to talk about his TERRIBLE style of playing!
And I don’t think Ancelotti will come back!
So, forget about all these idiots talking about Pioli… THOSE ARE IDIOTS who know nothing about what one such decision would involve!
Stop calling people idiots, you idiot. You have 29 injuries because of Pioli’s terrible training methods. Milan won only 5 out of last 12 games, got knocked out of champions league – whose fault is that? It’s Pioli. Putting Krunic and Musah on defense is a sign of being clueless. Conte would be thousand times better, regardless of what you say. What have you accomplished in life? Nothing besides posting on SempreMilan! You’re an idiot, stop posting – you’re embarrassing yourself.
You’re right, after Pioli there is nothing. No football, no life. Game over, life over.
Regardless of how the season ends. Pioli and his staff needs to go. Pioli is the only one protecting his staff from being fired and it’s to the detriment of the team and the season.
It’s as if Pioli would rather keep his staff that sucks and lose every thing else each season due to injuries.
Pioli is very loyal to underperforming players and staff. It’s the most bizarre thing I’ve seen in a coach.
Well if you look at his career it isn’t hard to understand why. This is a pattern that’s been happening for the past 20 years.
An internal investigation cannot detect this. External experts must be commissioned. I hope the Americans understand this side of the sport as well.
How come moneyball didn’t predict this? Buying players with history of serious injuries, and having a coach who does not rotate his players until someone actually hurts himself beyond a quick fix, that’s not a good plan is it?
He doesn’t want to admit he is wrong and his “fixes” by his athletic trainers are clearly not working. No other way to sugar coat it. Something is wrong on the athletic training part of the system.
We cannot manage pioli just because we think there are no better candidates, he will ruin the existing players till he is fired. He has not evolved his training methods since he arrived in Milan. The data shows that much, why is management slow to act on it?
Been going on for 4 years now under Pioli and they’re now “looking into it.”
Took 29 injuries for Gerry to wake up? 🙂
So the two popular theories are training methods and the pitch at the training grounds. But the pitch hadn’t been replaced at any point in the last decade and yet the injury problem had only gotten dramatically worse in the Pioli years…
Can’t be the busy schedule either, because other teams with the same schedule don’t have nearly as many injuries as we had at Milan…
So then training methods and intensity? That means Pioli would have to ditch the high press strategy and give up possession, and play more defensively – hitting on the counters?
Or is his medical staff simply incompetent and don’t allow for sufficient rest?
One thing is for sure, Gerry gonna bring in some American experts with Sports Science up the wazoo to figure this out. Curious how it plays out.
I think it’s both training methods and no rotation. Pioli plays his top players until they are dead and can no longer run – muscles get fatigued due to lack of rest and that results in injuries.
Ibra warned about the new pitch surface at the San Siro when it was first installed. He soon got injured and his career basically ended. Since then, injuries have been a complete disaster. However, since fixing the surface is expensive, everyone just acts like it’s medical related. Ridiculous.
Inter play on this same surface and don’t have the same number of injuries.
So, no, it’s not the San Siro pitch.
I suspect it’s a combination of high intensity training, and Pioli’s intense pressing tactics.