AC Milan general spiel

[Lombardiamia]

[maro]

[Lombardiamia]

[RobHood]

[RobHood]

Thought this was relevant here...nothing to do with getting rid of the waterboy tag...yeah, and fuck you Domenech...

[vtec]

excellent points by all. lomba is pretty much spot on on both teams' weaknesses. i maintain that height was one of, if not the biggest factors in our head-to-head results against inter. you will note that when we had stam, we fared significantly better against them than last season, when they were the tallest team in europe. it doesn't tell the whole story, of course, since in the second leg last year, both of their goals came from raping our left side, as they were owning our wings.

vogel may not have been a good substitute for ambrosini - who remains our only mid with good aerial ability - but he was a good surrogate for pirlo and even rino. we need that sort of player again, though preferably, someone with height as well. the players rob named are all exactly the kinds of players that would push ambrosini out as they would clearly offer something more, except that i would never put seedorf in that category.

i think i posted that domenech article in the azzurri thread.

[maro]

Yes, I like Vogel a lot and don't mean to suggest he couldn't still be a very useful member of the squad. I just feel that in the end he's not quite the right fit for your 'fourth' central midfielder, or 'fifth', or quite what role someone like Brocchi plays at the moment. Someone like Emerson, on the other hand - if you guys do seal him, I'm sure one or two of you will grumble because he's not the most likeable of chaps but he is still a very accomplished holding midfielder and would complement Gattuso and Pirlo very well, I think. Providing you don't have to pay over the odds for him, I should think he'd be a very shrewd acquisition. I know there have been whispers of Inter being interested, but they have much less need of a player like Emerson than you guys. Indeed, either way it'd probably strengthen Milan - I think his arrival would threaten to disrupt squad balance at Inter while he'd add a great deal to the balance of your squad. I tend to think that Baptista would play a fair bit deeper for you, too, were he to arrive; I just think you need another accomplished, big body in the middle of the park, as it were.

Lomba, what you say about Roma is doubtless true, though I tend to think that that point tends to get over-emphasised. First, one of our biggest problems against the smaller teams last season was conceding goals rather than being unable to score them. I think the game at home against Ascoli is a perfect example and the first half at home against Atalanta, too. Of course you could mount an argument which says that the way we attack against the smaller teams leaves us short at the back, but that's a slightly perverse way of describing our difficulty against teams which like to pack the defence. I'd be more persuaded had we drawn a succession of games 0-0. Secondly, Spags ought to be able to throw Vucinic alongside Totti up top for such situations; that version of a more direct 4-2-3-1, with Totti close to Voochie and therefore with a trequartista less dependent on space and movement ought to provide that tactical alternative. That Spags didn't turn to this alternative all that often suggests to me either that he's tactically intransigent (which his record makes one very much doubt) or that his sense was that the team wasn't playing well rather than was being shut down by the opposition's tactics. Perhaps that's a precarious distinction, but I think the problem here was more mental than tactical. And, thirdly, it also needs to be noted that many of the points we dropped against the smaller teams came in matches in which we were short key players - in the second half of the season, I'm thinking of the match against Empoli, for instance, and in the first half we were without both Taddei and Mancini for an important stretch. That the squad was thin and couldn't cope with injuries is certainly true and the situation will be the same this year if players like Esposito and Giuly and Vucinic and Barusso don't deliver as they may well not; still, I think the loss of points against small factor needs more nuanced explanation than the usual argument that without a big striker we struggle to break down packed defences. Of course it's partly true, but I do think it's only part of the story.

[vtec]

shinpin, are you catching any of the world youth cup games over there in malaysia? our primavera beat out ajax 1-0 this morning, so we are now sitting at 1-1-0. how long are you there for?

[vtec]

[maro]

[The MAN]

[Lombardiamia]

[The MAN]

[vtec]

also, i think it's filippo galli who is coaching our youth team in malaysia, not baresi.

[vtec]

[juventino_italiano]

[pocari_fenrir]

[Lombardiamia]

[Jamoldo]

[RobHood]