Palermo-Milan 30.11.2008

Finally, back after a long absence! My thoughts about the game echo most of yours---we have been having the same "lack of passion", slow, robotic game over the past 2 years where we seem to think that we just need to show up, knock the ball across the back four, jog up an down the pitch, and then we win the game. Ridiculous. The only times I see this team pressing opponents up and down the pitch and playing with any type of intensity is in the so-called big CL games, or in the occasional derbies.

No point winning 3 points against Inter or Juve, and then losing it against Lecce, Bologna, or Palermo. If we want to ever win the Scudetto again, what we need is consistency, winning pretty, winning ugly, but fighting in every game for the 3 points. We have just shot ourselves in the foot massively with this game.

We haven't played a single great game for quite a long time, we are earning points by penalty kicks and some late minute goals. It seems we extremely lack passion and intensity for a season long basis.

Originally Posted by nefremo

Absolutely horrible. This is one of the worst games I remember Milan playing. I can't believe how bad this team played.......and yes I agree with Carlo that this beating may do us some good when it comes to playing smaller teams. We are now 6 pts back and the players will have to bring their best against everyone.

The defence was bad yes.......but I won't put the blame all on them and call for their heads as they had not protection from the middle. Ambro,Flamini and Pirlo let the Palermo players run at our defence all night long. I don't care what kind of back line you have....if your midfield lets the opponents run AT the defenders then the backline will fold. Having said that.....I also can't defend the back line as they failed to deal even with the simplest crosses.

Maldini was bad all night long. Constantly out of position. It destabilazed the whole back line. However, I can't defend either one of the 4 except for maybe Zambrotta who was better then the rest I would say. It's not easy to play with a back line like that however and he too got sucked in towards the middle far too many times. The defence is a domino effect.....one pulls the other......covering spaces and keeping the shape. The problem with ours tonight was that none of them did that and they all bunched up in the middle and folded under pressure while bumping into each other like little kids.

The midfield......the true reason why we were overrun in this game. And here... I put the blame on Carlo. Pirlo was man-marked from the beggining. Carlo should have realized that and should have pushed Pirlo further forward. Then it would have been Palermo's call whether they wanted to still man mark Pirlo in their own half as it would have obviously disrupted their own defensive shape. But.....Carlo didn't do anything and we suffered for 60 minutes, untill he decided to give Pirlo freedom to roam further forward.... obviously now it was pointless as we were already down and Palermo already took the foot off the gas. All of Pirlo, Ambrosini and Flamini were bad. But Ambrosini was by far the weakest of the three. I don't remember him making one good pass, while I can easily remember him missplacing 5 or 6 FIVE METER passes. Pay attentnion....I am not saying 50 meter but FIVE METER passes. He was obsolutely terrible.

Seedorf was the man that ticked me off the most however. I just think it is unexplainable how he can give up the ball, turn around and lightly jog back without any effort. On one occasion he gave up the ball in Palermo's half and jogged back, while Pirlo run right by him. It is unbelieavable and embarrasing. The same thing happened with Zambrotta who flew by Seedorf while the "BIG NUMBER 10" gets to just walk around on the field. I was disguisted by his work rate today. Another time....Zambrotta had the ball on the right and was waiting for Seedorf to make the overlap run who was behing. Seedorf was just stainding there.......and then after a few seconds he started running forward for Zambrotta to play him the ball. Seedorf actually put in a pretty dangerous cross on that occasion but it took him 3 seconds to realize that he needs to make a run and not stand around like a king.

I don't mean to sh!t talk Seedorf as I do think he is an important player for us. But I am just pointing out that I don't think that type of behavior should be tolerated. Carlo should get a little tougher with his players. Drop them on the bench and show them who is the boss.

I am not going to mention any positives from this game. I'll leave it at this and I hope that the players wake up sooner rather then later. The season is long and one game can change everything. Look at Roma now. We are still in a good position with 2/3 of the season left to play. I really think we have the quality to win the league but we need to finish up December strong and then take things from the beggining with the winter training camp.........And I hope that Santa delivers us a healthy Nesta cuz we can realy use him right now.

FORZA MILAN FOREVER!

The guy is absolutely right. This result was coming. One could clearly see it. Since we beat Inter i haven't seen the team put in one brilliant performance (except probably against Napoli but they were down to 10 men in that one. Seriously, did even a single person thought those (since Derby day) were performances from a title winning team? I for one was always in doubt whether this squad is capable of the scudetto.. now its clear it's not.

But then i think something's wrong with the manager and the mentality he is imbibing in the players. He's become stale.

A ridiculous performance, one which the players should be ashamed of. Palermo fully deserved the win as we were barely in the match and didn’t show any effort until going 3-0 down.

The first half was an embarrassment. I can’t actually remember us getting so badly outplayed as we were. Someone mentioned this was our worst performance since Riazor and quite honestly that may well be true. The side had absoloutely no quality on the ball and was so sparsely spread over the pitch, we never looked like a team. The penalty seemed correct, but Ronaldinho missed (had he scored, we probably would have seen a different game, but we didn’t really deserve the lead).

The second half started well for a minute or two, but Palermo scored a great goal with Miccoli. Our defence was shocking as we left a wide open gap for Miccoli to shoot through straight to goal. Although Maldini was in a position to cover, I think he was correct to stick to his man and it should have been Bonera covering the gap. We didn’t really improve and it looked grim, which it was until going 3-0 down. After that we started playing with some effort in the last part of the game and Dinho did superbly to win a penalty to score.

Players:

Abbiati – One of few players who was acceptable. He made some important saves.

Zambrotta – Not a great performance, but by far the best in defence.

Bonera – Poor display, was all over the place and rarely seemed confident.

Maldini – He had a poor game tonight. His usually brilliant positioning let him down at times. Had a few high moments, but also many low moments.

Jankulovski – A poor game where he did little when pushing forward, and didn’t cover at the back.

Flamini – Lost the ball on many occasions and seemed easily overrun by Palermo players.

Pirlo – He was really poor in the first half, so much so I wouldn’t have blamed Carlo if he took him off. Improved in the second and did well in the final part of the match. He needs to play like that final part regularly.

Ambro – Never really got into the match and didn’t cover too well. Solid on the ball, but didn’t really offer much through the match.

Seedorf – A joke today, on the ball he couldn’t have slowed the game down further (the times he didn’t lose the ball). Made almost no positive impact on the game.

Ronaldinho – One of few players who deserves some credit. He missed a penalty, but his overall performance was impressive, and he looked very much like his old self running at defenders. Drifted in and out at times.

Pato – Injured early on but could have been important. He made a couple of good runs when he was on that resulted in a chance he should have scored and a penalty. Shame we lost him.

Pippo – Disappeared most of the time he was on. Was never really a threat.

Sheva – He tried to make a difference but he doesn’t look the same player as he was before. Some nice link up play with the midfield.

Emerson – Solidified the midfield a little, but little influence on the whole.

We were poor, there are no two ways about it. We didn’t look like championship contenders and fully deserved the hammering we got. It was actually embarrassing to watch what is meant to be one of the best sides in the world play such poor football.
Lately, we’re not working well as a team, and aren’t as tight as we should be on the pitch (similar to the start of the season). There has been a reliance on individual moments or players to make the difference and this needs to stop, as they can’t keep getting us the results all season.

The midfield isn’t covering well (which heaps pressure on the defence) and Ancelotti has to give Pirlo the freedom to push forward and actually benefit higher up the field. When Pirlo is further back he’s not only pressed by opponents, but we lose his creativity as he can’t take any risks in those areas.

It’s alarming to see us playing this way right now, and for me seeing Galliani’s face last night with Braida sat next to him with head in hands sums up our performance.

Well, Seedorf's problems is that he can be brillant one game and be the invisible man the next. NOw I know all great players will have bad game here and there but when great players like R80, Kaka or even R99 had bad games, they will also have those one or two brilliant moments that help the team turns the game around. Frankly speaking, when Seedorf has bad games, he just not there.
Throughout the years, watching Seedorf plays is quite painful b/c we know he got talents and can take over the game but he just choosed not to.
Thats why I think Milan should sell him after the season, as some teams might still want his service and fresh challenges will help him.

As for Pirlo, he is awesome, the injury laid off is hurting him but once he gets back into shape he will be amazing.

What bothers me about last night was our defense and tactics. X'mas tree must die unless our strikers are Ibra, Drogba, Borreillo and Toni.

Originally Posted by Gabriel489

... X'mas tree must die unless our strikers are Ibra, Drogba, Borreillo and Toni.

Christmas is almost here.. it has to die after it if things don't go well.

nice review, Dev, as always. Much appreciated esp. from those who miss the match!

thanks Jeff. I read nefremo's post after posting myself and found we've agreed on almost everything, which is interesting.

for all the people who are blaming Pirlo for our latest bad form, lets look at the facts, shall we?

1) he played only 70 mins vs Torino, and the equaliser came after he left
2) vs Pompey he didnt play...
3) vs Palermo the whole team was outpaced, out muscled... Palermo were simply better than Milan..
4) the loss vs Palermo... well, we really didnt have any true striker, it was the out of form Sheva who didnt provide anything to the team.
5) Dont you think it is Seedorf who is actually worse than Pirlo? he is slow, cant dribble past defenders, and his crosses certainly arent the best out of him lately.
6)our most motivated players in the last couple of matches were, Ronnie, Kaka, Flamini and Pato. thats it.

I think this loss will come as a miracle in disguise, and he team will actually start playing the football they know...
remember when we lost to Bologna and Genoa, we beat Lazio 4-1, we beat Hereneeven 3-1 and also ouplayed Inter in the derby..

this team deserved the loss and they should work harder in the match, Milan can do like Barca, finish off the match in the first half and then just keep possession for the 2nd half, but they just wont, because they somehow fail to score despite having many great chances.

Also, Galliani is partly due to blame here, he made great signings in the summer, but he really didnt make the best move which is to buy a defender, and Amelia(or atleast a good GK)

every team will have a bad performace every now and then, so lets hope we get back to winning ways vs Lazio this Wednesday, although its only the Italian cup...

One thing that bugs me is that when players besides Carlo's favourites come back from injury they have to be "slowly introduced" into the flow of the game.*coughGourcuffcough*
The team was working fine...now Pirlo comes back after TWO MONTHS, walks into the starting 11, plays crap and doesn't get subbed out. He also wasn't lighting the pitch afire before he got injured either. Remember the time he subbed I think it was Pato at HT? Anyone notice anything wrong here?

Pato was injured. CMIIW.

Gourcuff? He won't help anything in the game such like that, a game without motivation at all.

Oh no I wasn't talking about Pato's substitution nor Gourcuff being able to influence the game. I'm just talking about the ridiculous bias that Carlo has for certain players...UN WAVERING bias. I'd understand if they had been playing well for a sustained period of time or something but...Pirlo hadn't been playing well nor had he been fit and he gets an easy start and a full game. Problematic? I think so.

Originally Posted by Mystik

Oh no I wasn't talking about Pato's substitution nor Gourcuff being able to influence the game. I'm just talking about the ridiculous bias that Carlo has for certain players...UN WAVERING bias. I'd understand if they had been playing well for a sustained period of time or something but...Pirlo hadn't been playing well nor had he been fit and he gets an easy start and a full game. Problematic? I think so.

100% agree. I have a feeling that the people on this site who have stuck with Carlo and supported him should be starting to change there mind. New Coach and new Ideas are needed.....

Originally Posted by Mystik

Oh no I wasn't talking about Pato's substitution nor Gourcuff being able to influence the game. I'm just talking about the ridiculous bias that Carlo has for certain players...UN WAVERING bias. I'd understand if they had been playing well for a sustained period of time or something but...Pirlo hadn't been playing well nor had he been fit and he gets an easy start and a full game. Problematic? I think so.

i agree... but it certainly wasnt Pirlo's fault that we were outplayed vs Palermo.

Pirlo shouldnt have started vs Torino, he should have come on as a sub and he also should have been played vs Pompey..

also, Ambrosini was played from the start tonight, he did bad, got subbed earlier than planned, still, i think you people are getting the wrong impressions from the media.

Pirlo hasnt been that bad vs Palermo nor vs Torino, team performances affect individual players performances, remember that!

no Ace, Pirlo was horrible vs Palermo. I think Carlo should start Cardacio soon, send out a message to the team. However our next game is a coppa match vs Lazio (Cardacio should play here) and then against Juve. I hope we'll see a better performance from the midfield.