AC Milan general spiel

[The MAN]

[vtec]

[marco]

[arthurfonzarelli]

[arthurfonzarelli]

[p_maldini_3]

[RobHood]

[vtec]

[p_maldini_3]

[Bagg10]

milan's looking like a solid mid-table team...

[Dejan-Stankovic]

Lol.. the freshly promoted Juventus fans sticking it to the reigning European Champions?! The kids got some nerve...

[vtec]

[vtec]

Milan's Malaise Running Deep

The disastrous home defeat to Empoli has merely confirmed what most observers already knew: there is a crisis at Milan.

The big question, however, is whether this the start of an even deeper decline? Gil Gillespie reflects on the rossoneri's problems...

Disease


Something is rotten at the heart of Milan.

Even the ultra-positive Silvio Berlusconi has now acknowledged that things are not going well for his illustrious team this season.

"This is a black crisis," he told reporters following the Rossoneri’s 2-1 defeat to Celtic in the Champions League. "It‘s the worst period of results since I have been boss of this club."

He's not far wrong. Milan currently lie 11th in Serie A, ten points behind leaders Inter, having won only won two of their first eight league games of the season. To make matters worse, they also lost their Champions League tie against Celtic in the most disastrous of circumstances.

But it is not merely the results that are causing concern at Milanello. Carlo Ancelotti’s team have often looked lethargic, short on ideas and have been over-reliant on the always-inspirational Kaka.

The 1-0, Kaka-less loss against a highly organised Empoli team was a continuation of the somewhat passionless, lifeless displays that has already cost them points against Fiorentina, Siena, Parma and Catania.

Diagnosis


So what exactly is going on in the red-and-black corner of Italy‘s most glamorous city? The theories are many and many of them have an element of truth in them.

The first, and probably the most popular, is that Milan’s starting eleven are too old. Many feel that this is one season too many for the likes of Maldini, Favalli, Serginho, Seedorf, Emerson, Inzaghi and the rarely fit, often fat Ronaldo. [this is, frankly, bullshit. favalli, serginho, emerson and even to a degree maldini and inzaghi cannot be considered regular starting eleven players anymore]

Indeed, more than half of the current starting eleven are the wrong side of 30, hardly ideal in an era when games come thick and fast and usually twice a week.


There may be a little bit of mileage in this argument but, with the super-technology at MilanLab capable of extending careers almost beyond rationality, could it be the problem is not so much one of age as one of motivation? It must be difficult, even for supremely professional athletes, to get fired up for an away game at Siena when you’ve just won the World Cup, the Champions League or both. Have been-there-done-that superstars, like the trophy collecting Clarence Seedorf, or even Rino Gattuso, got the appetite for the long haul of a Serie A season? [there may be a point here, because somehow, we always step it up in the knockout stages of the champions league even when the same group of players struggles against empoli a week earlier. i expect brilliant performances in the toyota cup in december]


"We have problems against teams who close themselves up at the back," admitted Alessandro Nesta recently. Lazio, for instance, didn’t just sit back and soak up the pressure and Milan destroyed them 5-1. Empoli were far more pragmatic and came away from the San Siro with a win. [that's cause we lack creative vision and attacking options - duh. we need a striker like ronaldo or sheva in the lineup against teams like that--so fuck you berlusconi and galliani]

But there is a far more glaring reason for Milan’s start-of-the-season slump in form. Inzaghi and Gilardino are not an ideal striking partnership, and neither have been in a particularly good goalscoring mood of late playing on their own, either.

And with Ronaldo still kicking his heels on the injury table, or knocking back the drinks in Brazil, Berlusconi’s last-minute veto of the purchase of the outstanding Luca Toni in the summer now looks extremely short-sighted.

At least there is a chink of light on the horizon in the form of the new Brazilian wonderkid Alexandre Pato who is eligible to play competitive football from January. A quick look at his video highlights package on YouTube explains just why the club were so delighted to get his signature. Reports from the training camp suggest his debut cannot come too soon.




Theory three in the Milan ‘07 equation concerns the presence of Carlo Ancelotti as coach. Ancelotti has made no secret of his desire to succeed his former team-mate Donadoni as boss of the national team and some are seriously questioning his position at the club.

Should he, as Lippi did with the Italian team, have quit at the top after the Champions League triumph in May? Should he have the final say on who he signs and who he plays? And what the hell is he doing bringing on a defensive midfielder like Cristian Brocchi when Milan are 1-0 down against Empoli?

A quick scan of the substitute bench gives us an answer to the last of these questions. Ancelotti simply didn’t have any other attacking options at his disposal. In the end he had to resort to taking off Inzaghi and asking Ambrosini to play as a striker. It’s a ridiculous situation for a club as big as Milan. [bingo. fuck you berlusconi and galliani]

However it is Berlusconi, not Ancelotti, who controls the purse strings and oversees the transfer policy. But this doesn’t explain why the long-serving coach hasn’t acted to replace his disaster-prone Brazilian goalkeeper Dida. [again, bingo. get this virus out of the club, and again, fuck you berlusconi]

Of all the reasons cited for Milan’s average domestic performances and occasional European slip-ups in the last few years, the constant mistakes of the giant goalkeeper are probably the biggest factor of all.

Dida has become the elephant in the room that Ancelotti refuses to acknowledge. This is, lest we forget, the keeper who's three mistakes cost Milan the Champions League final in 2005, the quarter-final of the same competition against Deportivo a year earlier and almost did the same in the European Super Cup of 2007.

And, of course, it was Dida’s two truly diabolical errors that gifted Celtic three points a week or so ago in the Champions League. He is an utter liability, a keeper who has what those in the trade call ‘hard hands’. He cannot smother shots on goal or push them around the post; instead, he just palms them back into the path of oncoming strikers.

He also has slow feet when moving across his line and doesn’t know how to command his 18-yard area. Oh ,and he is indecisive and greasy-gloved when dealing with crosses.

Add a complete loss of confidence and you have the only keeper in the world who makes David James look like Mr Consistency. The trouble is, Milan’s number two Zeljko Kalac is even worse. Ancelotti must face up to the truth about Dida and either buy Marco Amelia from Palermo or recall Christian Abbiati from his loan period at Atletico Madrid.

Failure to do so will only see the early season’s problems deepen. And although Mr Berlusconi may be partly responsible for the malaise, he is not likely to tolerate any further descent into mediocrity.

Gil Gillespie

[Lombardiamia]

[vtec]

[The MAN]

[The MAN]

[The MAN]

[vtec]

[The MAN]