Tactics

The Christmas Tree, 42Fantasia, Leo's Trident... There's been quite a few formations that Milan has used to fill in the gap left by Kaka. Now that we have some really powerful pieces it's time to solve the puzzle.

The weakness of our 433 against other 433's is very apparent. Since our wingers never really track back, the opposition will use their full backs to double up on our full backs (see Cesena's first goal). This is a critical weakness, since our midfield can't cover all the time. This is usually only a problem with counterattacks when the midfield is high up in the field, and won't happen regularly against the big sides. It's a major problem against small '10 men behind the ball' teams. 433 is a big risk against them.

Things get much easier with the 433 if we score first. That's what happened with Lecce. If you remember that game, we actually were under a lot of pressure before we scored. It looked a little tough, but after Pato got the goal, things went a lot better. Same with Auxerre. Had we scored early against Cesena, we would have won easily. The reason is that by scoring, we force the opposition to attack and their fullbacks to venture forward with the ball (and that leaves Pato/Ronaldinho with space).

But we can't always risk everything on who manages to score first.

So what are our options?