After the 1-0 loss against Juventus, AC Milan manager Stefano Pioli spoke to the media about what went wrong for the Rossoneri. He admitted that Malick Thiaw’s red card was poor defending, but also from his teammates.
Milan started the game well and nearly took the lead through Olivier Giroud, who was denied by a great save. In the 40th minute, however, Thiaw was sent off after a poor challenge with Moise Kean.
Speaking to DAZN after the game, as cited by MilanNews, Pioli shared his thoughts on the game and the red card. He stated that the Rossoneri did well even with ten men and that they could have brought home the three points.
On the match…
“I don’t speak to the team after the matches, there is still too much tension and even disappointment. We played a match with 11 and 10 men, we could have been more attentive, and we weren’t inferior even when we were one man down.”
On Pulisic’s substitution after Thiaw’s red card…
“I removed an attacker to maintain the same defensive structure that we had prepared during the week. We started well in the second half, we had to be more intense and attentive in our half of the pitch to try to bring home a positive result.”
On Leao…
“I expected Weah to mark Leao more than Gatti. Gatti committed a lot of fouls. If you commit repeated fouls, you should get a yellow card by regulation. We played our game, but we had to fill the penalty box better in the first half. On the sending off, we committed individual and departmental naivety because we should have been tighter. It’s a shame because even with 10 men we weren’t inferior. A positive result would have been fairer.”
On the red card to Thiaw…
“He should have stayed put and not tried to advance. The full-back also made a mistake because he had to stay tighter. Thiaw was also unlucky because he slipped, but he could have done better.”
On Jovic…
“He entered well, he held the ball well. His condition is improving, Okafor can also play in that role. But if you need a player who holds the ball Jovic has different characteristics than Okafor who does better in other game situations.”
On the defeats against Inter and Juventus…
“It doesn’t take anything away from us. We have to try to do better. The team is aware of its qualities, then every match tells us where to improve. Becoming more concrete is certainly an objective.”
Milan will take on Paris Saint-Germain next and will have the likes of Theo Hernandez, Ruben Loftus-Cheek and Mike Maignan back. After two draws, the Rossoneri need to win at least one of the two games against the French side.
Bro Okafor still holds the ball better than Jovic and he presses and can dribble well.
Jovic can’t even get to the ball, FFS!!
This defeat is too bad, but at the end of the Day it’s just one defeat. We’re unable to defeat Inter and Juventus, but we are still second place and we pick win against opponent that we should win (remember, that is our downfall in recent seasons, including the scudetto season – inability to win against weaker teams).
So even if we don’t manage to defeat Inter, Juve, and Napoli, I’ll be happy if we manage to win the rest of the games. With 32 wins we will get 96 points, and that’s enough to win scudetto – bar 2 seasons, Juventus 2014 (102) and Inter 2007 (97)
Of course we will drop points along the way, but other teams will also drop points. So no need to be overly pessimistic, we need to support our team, players, and manager.
But it’s true that Pioli need to improve his substitution game and learn to keep believe in players and reduce favoritism in squad.
milan will not win againts big team this season. even struggling napoli gonna destroyed milan
No, Milan will swallow them up easily. Milan really love to play against a team with possession style of playing, with high defensive line and leaving 2/3 of the players behind, like Napoli. Plus, this season Napoli’s defense is one of the worst compared to other top clubs in Serie A. Milan’s weakness is when they face teams that have a ‘park the bus’ style of play. A team that defends very deep, solid and compact with 10 players in their defensive area, such as Inter, Juve, Genoa and several bottom teams in Serie A.
As I said, even if we cant defeat Inter, Napoli, and Juventus home and away (6 matches) it won’t really matter if we won the rest of the matches, that would be 32 matches, so 96 points, plus any points from draw against those 3 teams.
keep your delusion. with UCL and coppa, milan won win all the games like you said. not to mention injured make its worse. and pioli has no idea playing different tactics. and most of series a clubs playing defensive style, so like you said milan struggling againts that type opponent that more reason milan wont winning scudetto under pioli.
It’s not just a substitution problem. We simply can’t play against teams who are good at counterattacks.
Many people (including Pioli himself) think that these games were not so bad because we dominated them. But in reality, we had a shallow possession with few dangerous attacks, and it was the opponent who choose to sit and wait rather than trying to out-possess us.
In this season so far, despite a clearly better squad, we have won none of our games against top teams (including Newcastle at home and Dortmund).
I think this shows that there is a problem is how we play.
What naivety is bringing krunic. When adli can break defence by his vertical pass
What pioli can do? His work is too much depend from his players performance nothing from himself that can improve or change, not a tactis not a strategi even now not a mentality. A coach is a central figure in a team, he should take the responsibility
A bit unfortunate to lose his man, but Thiaw should be reading the game better. Yunus is a bit lost to me, I am not sure what his natural position is but he seems to be all over the field with no real impact. Something for the coach to work on to get the best out of him. At some point it felt like we were down to 9 with nothing coming from his side.
Thiaw lost us two games this season. No two ways about it.
No doubt Thiaw made a critical mistake but it was something that can happen to any defender , even the greats.
Florenzi was struggling,leaving so much space behind which Malik had to sort out and playing such a high line with Kean (who is underestimated) can be difficult…Kean is decievingly fast .
Overall ,Thiaw needs to learn ,but he has mostly played great and has one of the highest potential ceilings in Europe hence why Madrid want him.
Agreed. That’s the price of playing such a young player at such an important position. The kid definitely has potential and should keep his chin up and keep working
I will keep saying what I have been saying pioli is not a good coach AC Milan will continue like this until he’s sacked mark my words, read d matches u will see that they have been unable to beat any big team this season and they have been struggling with small teams wit d formation of 3-5-2 pioli depends on d team’s ability on d pitch he has no special tactics inpact on d boys when on d pitch that’s why few of d players play without instructions from him ac Milan have one of d best squard in Italy presently d only problem vwe have is d coach. I hope d management sees what am saying early b4 he destroy this team