The midfield model

[nefremo]

I think you're kind of on the mark with the model. I'd say we're looking to have a destroyer (De Jong), creator/director (Montolivo) and mezzala (Poli?), which is the equivalent of your DM, balanced CM and creative AM. This is a fairly normal set up for a 3 man midfield, so it's not a surprise we're following it.

I agree with this. Talking about the players we have available right now for those positions though, I think we lack the creative part.

So for example like you stated... De Jong as the DM, Montolivo as the balanced CM, and another player as the more direct/vertical creative mid (Poli). I think this last part is what we have to work on. Poli is simply not that (I stated my reasoning behind it in the "Poli thread"). If we can get a player in there that is more offensive/vertical then him then we will be kind of set in those positions. We CAN get away with a player like Poli there, however then we need a different creative/vertical source in our attacking 3 positions. (Ballotelli/Pazzini/El Shaarawy/Niang are not this player.........Robinho/Boateng I thought COULD be this player a couple of years ago but they've been so disappointing that I'm not so sure that they can be this player for us anymore). So we would essentially have a possession minded midfield with a mild source of creativity, but we would be getting our creativity (chances created) from our attackers and wingers.....for example Ribery/Robben at Bayern; Valencia/Nani/Rooney at United; Hazard/Oscar at Chelsea; etc.

To look at Barca a couple of years ago for example....Busquets (holding DM), Xavi (possession based, but clearly able to pick out a vertical pass at any point), Iniesta (very vertical player able to take on players and push through to join the attacking line at all times). Let's not even get into the fact that they had/have some of the most creative attackers/wingers/forwards on top of their midfield.

I think we kind of have some of that in our team in De Jong and Montolivo....but the vertical type (creative) of player is what we are missing.

I'm not saying we should base our midfield on that model, so let's even look at our midfield of 8-10 years ago. Pirlo (creative source), Gattuso (destroyer), Seedorf (mezzala....but he was much more then that as he could do everything a midfielder was supposed to do). Even though these players were arranged on the field differently (the creative source was in front of the defense and the destroyer was a bit further up the field), it was still the same idea. On top of this, we had players like Rui, Rivaldo, Kaka to create further up the field.

So to go back to my point from earlier, we can see some sort of similarity to those teams and our current one when you put in De Jong and Montolivo in there, however that's where it stops. I would consider Poli an alternative to Montolivo at this point UNLESS we get a creative and vertical source further up the field.

A midfield of De Jong-Montolivo-Poli with El Shaarawy-Boateng-Balotelli in front of them for example will still result in some very dull attacks. Insert a player able to create/play vertically/dribble past players/score in any one of those 2 lines....and all of a sudden you are looking at danger.

[ACM2023]

I blame Galliani for messing up our finance through giving out irrational wages/extensions 6-8 seasons ago. Though we are now on the right track fixing it, we paid a dear price for it. Imagine we could still have Kaka and Silva; we might still have Pato (with good guidance). We could have remained highly competitive in the past seasons.

Back to the topic, I feel that Montolivo--De Jong--Boateng could work. Just like Gattuso who was limited but well utilized, I feel that Boateng has great quality that a great tactician may be able to get the best out of him. As many of you pointed out, we still lack of a consistent and reliable source of creativity. That's why I wished that we had never sold Kaka (to be clear, I don't want him back).

[Nalx]

Based on the players we have now a midfield of Monto - de Jong - Boateng looks like our best bet. I haven't seen much of Poli, chances are Allegri will give him some time to adapt to our team. Pretty much like what happened to El Shaarawy and Niang.


That said I'm not that keen on this 4-3-3. We don't have a reliable right forward. Robinho is useless there, at this age Niang and Saponara are better as impact players, and as long as we don't have a good player there, Allegri either overtinker his formation, putting players like Urby or Boateng there or as a treq. It's too big a temptation for him. Heck, he even played Urby on three different positions yesterday. Our play will become left-heavy and we'll rely too much on Mario + Stephan to carry the team. Once either of them is having a bad spell, or the fatigue sets in in the final months, or the opponents find out that they only need to defend deep and our team will become clueless and we're in trouble.


That's why I think the arrival of a good treq will give us so many options upfront and it'll complement this midfield model of three players that you guys are advocating. We'll strike the balance between technical and physical players instead of putting as many runner in midfield as we can and leave our strikers to create something on their own. As an alternative we can ease up young players like Niang or Saponara and play whether in this formation or even 4-3-3 because after all it worked really well for two or three months last season. I just don't think it's good enough to be our plan A.

[WCmilan]

Poli looked really good in the TIM cup and I'm hoping Boateng can play well if he stays.

Danny said we follow a Barca type midfield model, which maybe true I haven't really paid attention but another thing is we also do a lot of possession training when I watch milanello videos. It's practically all they do every single training session. Now, I remember Galliani did say that we are taking certain aspects of Barcelona/Ajax and Bayern Munich in our approach to this new project. I'm guessing maybe Barcelona's model and possession play in the midfield could very well be one of the aspects we are practicing.

Also, I remember when we beat Barca 2-0 at home Andy Gray said that we used Barcelona's tactics against them. We swarmed their players in groups, almost 8/10 times successfully winning possession. Noticed it A LOT in our TIM cup game against Rubentus as well where we did it even better, against Sassuolo it seemed like we really didn't care at all, likewise I don't think we should have (who wants to win that cursed trophy anyhow ). It takes long to nail this defensive approach down, and even then it could leave gaps. Barcelona are very hard to break down from midfield, but I always notice that once you do get by their midfield (aka where the opposition is getting swarmed in groups) they almost always have huge gaps in the back which is how they concede most of the time.

On a side note, Galliani also met with Doyen Sports who have Kondogbia under their belt who is also one of our transfer targets. If we got him we'd resemble Barca's midfield even more, he's a very similar player to Busquets.. Tall, strong, dirty/destroyer type player with good feet and a nice passing range.

[ACMILAN1983]

Actually I thought Boateng did well in TIM Trophy, so maybe we can hope for improvements this season.

[Alan]

That said I'm not that keen on this 4-3-3. We don't have a reliable right forward. Robinho is useless there, at this age Niang and Saponara are better as impact players,

we don't have the option of not using them as more regular starters given our finances. If we could have brought in Ljajic then great, but signing saponara given our transfer budget means we must be using as more than an impact player.

I would be happy with a 4-3-3 giving saponara time to adapt the role with niang sometimes used when we need more pace. Boateng can perhaps be used more there against bigger teams as he can do some running up front to help defensively.