In the summer, AC Milan didn’t sign another defender – a decision that may look worse with hindsight – but there was a reason why…
Signing another defender became a late priority for Milan, but they weren’t going to be rash with who arrived. It was not going to be a case of adding someone for the sake of it. Instead, they’d stick to the mercato idea of adding because the club wanted to add quality, not because they needed another body.
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Diawara faith sky-high at Milan
This morning’s edition of Gazzetta dello Sport looked ahead to January, as can be seen below. However, there was also a little bit about why a decision was made not to sign another central defender.
Indeed, alongside Ruben Amorim and the recruitment team, Gerry Cardinale opted to make do with the tools available, believing that they would be enough.
Of course, hindsight is nice, with Matteo Gabbia’s struggles and Mario Gila’s ‘irreplaceable’ qualities. However, the belief was that no one would add more than what Diawara could.
The young Frenchman is seen as the backup for Strahinja Pavlovic, but right now he’s one of two back-ups that can actually play.
Very highly rated internally, the club didn’t want to make another signing ‘for the sake of it’, preferring to place their trust in the youngster from Troyes. So far, he’s not seen a competitive minute, but his time could come alongside Christian Comotto and Francesco Camarda.
Why didn’t we sign a MC and a SC and a better AMRC? MUCH better!
He looked extremely slow in pre-season. Hope that was just because of heavy legs. I think this is just wishfull thinking, i.e. an ad hoc argument.
And instead of Tomori or Diawara he put Terraciano for CB position… I really don’t know what goes in that mind.
Exactly- I think Portuguese logic was that Diawara is left-sided (I think) but that makes no sense either – he’s supposedly so good there’s no need to buy anyone else but not good enough to come on instead of Terraciano??
Tomori hasn’t trained with the team. Diawara doesn’t play on the right, neither does Barte. Gabbia wasn’t available to slot in the center and shift Kone right.
He literally had no other option after Gila’s knee problem.
Also right – it’s just poor planning…
That means we will have problem at the back if Gila is not available, and that will be our weak point this season, because at the moment, Gila is the best at our difence right now, so imagine he is now injured for some game, that means we will have terra to start some matches which would give us some issues at the back, that weak point really shows ve juventus, imagine juventus bringing in his best men to attack, and we are removing our best defender for and bringing in who is not reliable, if not that, de winter won’t commit that foul that lead to the equaliser, because that was terra”s position. That just my view with this our beloved team currently.
Haven’t people learned by now, what is obviously to an Italian Milanista who knows Italian sports media, that GdS is made of a bunch of Interisti and Juventini, and they loooooove to stir up controversy regarding Milan?
This article is beyond stupid because Dewara plays on the left. Yes, Terracciano is bad, but Amorim had no other option. He was already playing a Moreira out of position (Moreira is a bit more versatile but also favors the left), and displacing a player who unlike Moreira has never player on the right, would have been stupid.
Yes, the mercato failed to secure another center back (Milan did try Inácio but too late – and that’s the core of the problem) but not bringing in Diawara to replace a fatigued and half-injured Gila wasn’t the wrong decision.
GdS is just trying to undermine Amorim. They will jump at any opportunity to trouble the environment at Milan. It’s similar to their other article talking about the low xG Milan had against Juve, critizing Amorim for saying he is offensively-minded but not acting as such against Juve. There, they have a point. I didn’t like Amorim’s lineup choices and I think he should have yanked out underperforming players in favor of Chuk and Cisse at halftime rather than at minute 60, and maybe Puli would have been better than RLC. Hopefully Amorim will learn with these lineup mistakes. But it is half-understandable. He’s been with Milan for only two months and he was given an incomplete roster; he is still experimenting a bit, and we outsiders to Milanello do not know how fit Pulisic was, so talk is cheap, but the head coach is the one who is observing daily how his players are doing in training.
We can’t expect Amorim to fix the team in two months and after one mercato. It will take a lot longer to bring Milan back to being competitive for trophies. The main issue is, will Cardinale grant to Amorim the necessary working time? Cardinale has rotated head coaches frequently and may become frustrated with Amorim if results are not immediate, but he needs to understand that results cannot be immediate. It takes time to fix the mess that Milan became, in great part thanks to Cardinale’s own mistakes.
Agreed with most of this Luigi, except the Moreira best on the left. We all assumed he was signed as a star LWB but Moreira himself said he prefers the right side.
Hopefully he can adapt to Amorim-ball as a LWB as a lot of fans are frustrated with Estunpjnan as our starter