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.”