Napoli-Milan 28/10/09

While right this moment, it is obviously preferable, as always, to get the 3 points instead of the 1. But, we haven't won at Napoli in a long time, from what I can gather. We drew there last year 0-0, and lost 3-1 to them the year before. So, we've done well to get a draw (even if it should have been a win) against a team that, like us, are rejuvenating and finding their true value.

I think that even in the wins we have had, we have seen issues, and they aren't defensive, but mostly have to do with our ability to finish chances and close out games. Leonardo has to learn to do that, and I think this is the weakness of his leadership. I think he'll have the comfort of being able to review this knowing that we threw away three points, I think that there is a sincere possibility that this game will make the players look hard at themselves and what they can do to take themselves to the next level.

Plus, there were a lot of games back-to-back and I'm frankly impressed that we can be disappointed at dropping points rather than happy to finally get them. Two weeks ago, did you think we would have wins over Roma, Real Madrid, and Chievo? Would you have taken the draw with Napoli back then? I would have.

I wonder why Antonini wasn't given a chance, he played well against Chievo. I feel that Zambrotta on the right, Antonini left, and Abate in the midfield would have been a good way to rotate. I guess Antonini was just that tired from the first game?

Anyways, I think there are lessons to be learned, and its nice to learn them by taking a draw from a tough place to go, rather than losing. Hopefully we can readjust and return to our winning ways in the next game.

Well, Napoli deserved a draw at least, we played well just for first 10 minutes. Still they'd never score if it wasn't ****in' Abate getting red carded, they are pathetic. It's a shame. Instead of talking like "he was good, he was bad", I will try to make ratings player by player:

Dida 8 - You don't expect rating this high for a keeper who made just 3 or 4 saves, but what a performance that was! One double-save and one TRIPLE-save, if the ****in thing even exists! Other than that, was uncharacteristically sure coming off his line, but perhaps he could've done better at the second goal.

Abate 3 - Didn't do anything forward, he cannot play a simple long pass precisely, he was solid at the back, did well against Lavezzi, until he made that unneeded outrageous challenge that cost us a game. A man who's timing is that horrible shouldn't play football professionally. And I hear some of you saying that he should play in midfield. GOD.

Nesta - Didn't play so long to deserve a rating.

T. Silva 7.5 - If it wasn't for him, we would loss this game, was rock solid in defense, his tacking and positioning are already a class. If he was alert when Kaladze lost Dennis for the second goal, he would deserve even more.

Zambrotta 6.5 - Great at the back as usual, but offered nothing in attack.

Ambrosini 7 - Defended well, ran for 2 other guys , and created a great chance for a third goal that Inzaghi somehow missed.

Pirlo 5 - (Another) dreadful performance from Pirlo, couldn't keep the ball, didn't spread play like he used to, and yet provided a little defensively. I'm looking forward for Beckham's arrival.

Seedorf 6.5 - Created the first goal, cleared many corners, but ironically his poor clearance led to Cigarini's goal. Other than that, he show some fight, but he was lazy tracking back as usual. If he's going to play a center midfielder Leonardo MUST tell him to close down more.

Pato 7.5 - Scored one, was very lively upfront, made problems even if he had no support from Abate.

Inzaghi 7 - Scored one, created one and missed an absolute sitter. His ball control is dreadful and he should really consider to finish a chance by a shot and not by rounding keeper.

Ronaldinho 5 - Made himself available but when he received the ball he did nothing with it. But it was expected as this was his 4th game in a row.


Kaladze 6 - Was good in the air, played well and secure, until he failed to mark Dennis at the dead, leading to the equalizer.

Flamini 6 - Played a little and did nothing wrong.

Borriello - It would be unfair to rate him badly cause he played a little time, but truth to be told, whenever he received the ball he lost it. Made one great timed run and scored but Pato's pass was late so he was offside.


Leonardo 7 - Great tactic for him, as we applied pressure at the beginning and scored twice and then we cleverly sat back because we played two matches in a last 7 days and we play 2 matches in a next 7 also, so we needed rest. Perhaps he could place his players better when Abate got red carded.

little harsh on Abate. he made a bad tackle. that happens. it is still very possible for 10 players to defend a 2 goal lead. and Abate IS a midfielder.

Dida looked good. He looked a little flat footed on the second goal. now we have three quality keepers...

Well, it's dissapointing to draw a game after you've led 2-0 for 90 minutes. But this is the game that we all love and sometimes it goes well and sometimes it goes horribly bad. It is what it is, and we should have won the 3 points today. But that's probably how Chievo felt like as well 3 days ago.

The question is if we should view this as 1 point gained or 2 points lost??? I guess it's both. We are allowed to tie a game expecially one as tough as this one was always going to be. You can't win them all. So it must be 1 point gained..........but then again no matter how tough the opponent or the game is, if you menage to lead 2-0 for the ENTIRE game and you don't win then it's gotta be 2 points lost! I guess I'm beating the dead horse here. In any case, it is a positive result if you ONLY look at the score line and not look at the times that the goals were scored it.

As for the game itself, we simply stopped playing after the 5th minute. We thought we had won the game. We were too stagnant and lost way too many balls. Our midfielders were happy to give the ball to the CBs and not show up for it again resulting in us losing possession all the time in the first half. The second was different as we knew that they were going to press us on all parts of the field.

Ronaldinho was really bad today. He actually didn't start too bad but after we scored the goals he went blank. Didn't seem to be bothered to do anything right. Lost the ball way too many times and was rightfully substituted. It was a really bad game from him. He had no reason to be mad at the substitution. He should maybe work his a$s on the field so he doesn't get substituted rather then be nonchalant throughout the game.

Silva and Dida were great throughout the game. As for the goals that they scored........why are we leaving a wide open man on the edge of our penalty area on corners. It happened against Madrid and it happened today with Cigarini. Luca hit an unbelieavable shot but he shouldn't have been wide open, period. We should have had someone on the top of the D waiting on a cleared ball instead we had noone and Cigarini was free to take a swing at it. As for the second goal, it's stupidity at it's highest.

Anyhow, let's move on and re-group. Hopefully Inter won't pull away even further up front tomorrow. In any case we have won 7 of 9 possible points in the last 3 games with 2 of them being extremely difficult. In the middle of all that we have managed to go top of our CL group while beating Madrid in Spain......so I would say that we are in a positive moment. That's why let's not dwell too much on dissapointing players' performances and mistakes, but let's move on to Saturday and beat Parma to get back on track.

Originally Posted by ReMad

1st goal for napoli from Cigarini min.90
click here for the video

2nd goal for napoli from Denis min.92
click here for the video

thanks for uploading. the first goal looked the same way we conceded against Real Mad (italia's the cradle of great coach). the second goal was due to lack of concentration?

on the bright side Paolschi scored for Parma. We will stop him next match, but I am glad he is doing well

What what I saw, 2 great goals from Napoli....

Deserved the draw...

a great game, probably the draw was the right result.... great game by Dida and T.Silva, I thought Pirlo and Ambro were good today...Ronaldinho played well for 20 minutes and then EVERY SINGLE time he got the ball, he wasted it for the rest of the match. Inzaghi did well I thought, Pato's improving but I don't like the way he dribbles, out of 10 times he loses the ball 8 times... however I had to reserve my last sentence for Abate, who was absolutely HORRIBLE in every sense today.. his clearance shots were directly to the opponent right infront of our box (like 5 of them) and his offense was poor, and he did block 4 crosses in the second half...however he really, really was bad and that red card just made it all alot worse..he is the reason we dropped points.

other than that, good game.. but a team like napoli shouldn't be dominating us like this if we are aiming to be a great team.. juventus (and inter will) gain two more points ahead of us...race for scudetto might not be what we should be aiming for... in the race for third, genoa and udinese won, whilst roma and fiorentina lost..so thats good for us.

and off-topic: milan have apparently signed the player of the tournament in the u20 world cup, the ghanaian striker.. let's see how eral this rumour is tomorrow.

It feels like crap when u lead for 90 odd minutes and then end up drawing by two wonderfully scored goals in a span of two minutes by your opponents. I mean it makes u feel sick and i just couldnt sleep last night. We gave away 2 points just like that considering that we were hanging on unitl the end with some extraordinary saves from Dida. Abate played okay and his challenge was clumpsy without a doubt. But still couldnt we just hang on for another 10 minutes or so. Common its not like we had all our players red carded. For me the biggest problem i found was that our players were getting too complacent with the lead we had in the first and the only objecticve seemed to be to defend. We had only 52% possesion in the game. All those long balls in no mans land justified that. Our defenders could have done better with the second goal. Silva was simply outstanding. But Kaladze and Zambrotta were catastrophic. Kaladze looks like he s just got off the bed o something, always clueless. Zambrotta-too slow. It just goes to show we cant do without Nesta. He s our strength at the back. I thought they should have just kept playing the ball around in the final few minutes especially when we were one man down. Anyways, i was expecting a draw, but not when we are this close to winning. Hoping to win the Parma game atleast.

And i also agree with most of ull here, regarding the first goal, it was Pirlo s fault and he shouldnt have just given it away that cheaply but Abate had no reason to make that clumpsy challenge when he knows he s on a yellow. ****ing Pissed

If Leo praised the team determination for the whole 90 mins against Roma, Madrid, and Chievo, then he couldn't say the same thing now. Perhaps it's due to arrogance or tiredness. Yes we lost 2 points, but the good thing is, this game showed that we still have so many problems to deal with.

I read somewhere that Dinho was furious when substituted. I really don't like this. I hope Leo has the guts to show him who the boss is.

they took away 2 points from us in time added on, that's true, but we took 2 against Chievo the same way (albeit we scored once not twice)...there we desreved to win, here Napoli deserved to draw, so to be fair...that was a fair result.
i hate the way we played the match after the 2 goals. we were all over them and then decided that 2 is enough and went to sleep for the next 80 minutes. i wish Leo would make them watch a Barcelona match maybe they could learn to keep trying to score goals no matter what the scorline is. i know it has never been in our tradition to play like that but i don't know why.
Dida was brilliant yesterday again...i sure hope he proves us all wrong and can be that GK we saw way back in 2003.
i sure hope Nesta will be back asap.
plzzzzzzzzzzzzz stop forcing Abate to be a right back. he has to work so hard to be "decent" there when he can actually be very good as a winger...i even think he can do a better job as the extra wide man that Galliani is looking for to rotate with Pato & R80 than as right back. (i agree with pirlofanusa, revolver obviously did not watch him play that friendly against Bayern Munich)
R80 was poor because he is becoming so predictable: hold that ball with his back to goal on the left wing take a look to the middle or the right wing and deliver a "hopeful" ball...he probably had 2 good passes in the run of the guy coming through the middle all match and that was it.

so i guess the winning formula is to concede in the 1st and make a comeback in the 2nd :s

didnt watch the game, however, lets take the positive points out of this game,
- compared to beginning of the season, now, we at least scored 2 goals both home & away
- pato has started scoring again(since vs Roma) and is still so..
- the result showed B&G we need more than a Beckham during Jan transfer window, as those oldguards obviously couldnt play 90mins every 3-4 days.. B&G must have been awaken by this result, I really hope so..

Cheers! Forza Milan.. !

PS.Let's worry more about Nesta condition, is he OK?

@ LebRN

Yes I've watched Abate against Bayern, so what's the point?! Did u saw something I didn't? All he has shown in that game was will and pace, nothing more.

And that's all about what he is: will and pace, good cross on the occasion. His passing is below average, last night he misplaced a simple long passes to the player 20 meters in front of him, his team work is HORRIBLE, every time we could concede after bad offside-trap it was him or Kaladze, Pato was waiting for his support every ****in time and he didn't got it even once, and I don't even need to talk about his timing.

He's a decently talented player who can play at some less important position like full back, he almost has all what it takes for it, will, pace, can cross, pretty good in defense, all he needs is to improve his timing and team work which comes with experience. But to be a midfielder in Milan, please, u cannot be serious.

@pirlofan

I didn't saw your post, yes I know that he IS a midfielder, but he's not good enough midfielder for Milan. Yes, bad tackle happens but you cannot tackle like that when you have a yellow card and especially when there is no ANY need for that tackle, because Silva was right behind. If you got a yellow card you didn't deserve, you cannot tackle like that and expect to get away.

I forgot, it's a real shame for us, because we lost a 2 goals lead against very tough opponent in an away game. I believe that neither Juve or Inter will take all 3 points at San Paolo, so it was our chance to make a break. It's a shame that a team like Inter will win the title for the 4th time in a row (not counting the titles they didn't won at the pitch) and nobody will stop them. I really think we can fight for the Scudetto this term, not because we are so good, but because others aren't good too.