Paulo Fonseca believes that alack of positive attitude, energy and a desire to defend cost Milan dearly in their 2-1 loss away to Parma in Serie A on Saturday evening.
The Rossoneri are now two games without a win in 2024-25, following last week’s 2-2 draw with Torino. Today’s goals came via Dennis Man after two minutes, Christian Pulisic with the equaliser after 66 minutes, and the eventual winner from Matteo Cancellieri 10 minutes later.
Fonseca was frustrated during his post-match media duties, saying that it is ‘difficult to understand’ Milan’s performance, given that the team had prepared well in the week building up to Saturday’s game.
He took responsibility for the performance, but then began to critique his player’s attitude in defence.
Fonseca blames Milan loss on ‘attitude, energy and desire to defend as a team’
“I have to say, the main responsibility for what happens with this team lies with me,” Fonseca told DAZN at full-time.
“I take responsibility and I don’t want to hide away from that. However, it’s clear to me that there is a collective problem when it comes to defending and aggression.”
Asked if his players have an attitude problem, Fonseca replied: “I think it’s everything. This team has a problem generally. We had problems when we didn’t press too high against Torino. Today we tried to get players to press higher, and we still had problems.
“When someone played through our pressure, it became difficult to stay compact and recover our positions. When we got back into position, we were passive. There are lots of things. To me, it’s a problem with attitude, energy and desire to defend as a team.
Milan enjoyed a productive pre-season this summer, including impressive victories over Real Madrid and Manchester City during their tour of the United States. Did Fonseca expect the league season to start in the way it has after those victories?
“No. The truth is that we had a good pre-season, but this here is our reality,” he said. “It is always easier to play against big teams, you are more motivated.
“We came here and there was a change that is really difficult to understand. During the week, when we prepare our strategies, the team does really well. Then it gets to the game and we start acting like this, it’s difficult to explain.”
Team’s attitude and energy are your responsibility my dude.
The formation hasn’t worked for 2 years, and yet still persisting with it 😂
Enough with philosophy talk football please we were disastours in all aspects tacticaly loftus cheek is not a clear 10 and musah in not a pivot it is very simple , anyway i am expecting a heavy defeat in the derby
Hiring a coach who could not even remember how many subs he had used & who was on red card LOL. What did Milan boards & that arrogant swedish hope for?
Omar you are right! This game was like sold match. Players did not care about result anyway. Leao, Theo were too slow, Pulisic invisible. Chukwueze should play from start. Loftus useless. New player Emerson was worse like Calabria. Okafor cant play a whole match, he is good only for a 20minutes. Pavlovic was good, he was only good today. Im afraid that Milan will play worse with new men in midfield like with old players.
AC Milsn reaps what they sow for NOT contracting Italian players.
Hopefully, they get relegated!
Perhaps AC Milan should employ more Italians and get back to basics!
AC Milan is reaping what they sow!
Ibrahimovic should be fired and send back to Sweden! That dude knows nothing about football I tell you…
Marseille will play tonight. I suggest Milan fans to watch the game and pretend De Zerbi is coaching Milan. 🙂
The team will Get stronger snd stronger. They are going to dominante matches with Time. I saw part of the potential in the second half early on. Many central new players has come and They will adapt.
Adekunle – Ibra was super player but yes he knows nothing about his new role. El Cid – I wanted De Zerbi so much, he is a fan of Milan and he would never let this happen with his team. I hope they will wake up because these 2 matches were played with weaker teams.
Frankly , most players in the squad currently would not be in the team the time when AC Milan was feared by other and dominated Europe.