One of the issues that has been discussed most regarding the AC Milan squad has been how Charles De Ketelaere and Yacine Adli have seemingly fallen out of favour under Stefano Pioli.
Adli was left on loan at Bordeaux last season to help his development and then impressed in preseason yet he has only made one start in the league so far in the 2022-23 campaign, and was left out of the Champions League squad list altogether.
De Ketelaere meanwhile was Milan’s big coup in the summer transfer window after the Scudetto win and while the initial signs were bright and he seemed to have a starting spot, he has now been relegated behind Brahim Diaz and even Ismael Bennacer in the pecking order.
So just how have two creative playmakers who seemed nailed on to compete for the No.10 role ended up being the bottom two in the hierarchies? ScoutCalcio has analysed their season so far…
Pioli’s system
Arguably the most important thing to consider is that Pioli wants a heavy-man oriented press (at least until our energy levels have dropped within games or there is little time between fixtures). Below is a clip of what each player has to do as part of those instructions.
For De Ketelaere – who has always been at his best in a ‘false nine’ type role – his job as the attacking midfielder (the same goes for Adli and Brahim Diaz) off the ball is to pick up a player (Pioli tells them who) and to mark him tightly.
The following clip shows the game against Inter where his job was to mark Brozovic, and he failed.
Then there is the game against Napoli. The Partenopei’s three-man midfield started a heavy rotation passing sequence and all of Milan’s three men stick to each of their markers. Since it is a man-oriented system, just one player failing can and will cost the team heavily, like that Brozovic goal.
Importance of pressing
Jurgen Klopp once said that ‘no playmaker in the world can be as good as a good counter-pressing’. Adli’s off the ball work was never outstanding. So while on the ball he is creative, the clip below shows that Pioli doesn’t depend on creativity in midfield and moreso on winning the ball back through the press.
The future
Will Adli and De Ketealere make it in this team? When both signed it became obvious that the best way to accentuate their skills is to switch to a more possession-oriented style.
Without doing that, it seemed unlikely that the Frenchman would forge a starting role while the Belgian seemed more suited to a different role like right winger or centre-forward.
Perhaps they can do enough work behind the scenes to become fitter and do more of what Pioli requires of his attacking midfielder, but if it were as simple as fitness and work rate then RB Leipzig and Red Bull Salzburg would not have to discard players who do not make the cut on a technical level.
Perhaps next season with more fresh players and the press becoming better again both can fit in, but at the moment they just don’t seem to be capable of doing what Pioli requests because it simply is not in their make-up after the way they have been previously coached and developed at their previous clubs.
