GdS: Pioli leans on Leao again after turbulent Thursday – a response is needed

SempreMilan

·14 April 2024

GdS: Pioli leans on Leao again after turbulent Thursday – a response is needed

Despite the fact that mass rotation is expected for today’s game against Sassuolo, Rafael Leao is still expected to get the nod and it will be interesting to see how he performs after Thursday night.

Leao left the field to jeers on Thursday after a poor performance, though they might have been for the decision to bring him off, so the Portuguese winger will look to get back into his groove again today against Sassuolo.

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Stefano Pioli will choose to rotate in many areas of the pitch but he will stick with Leao who, perhaps rather surprisingly, should still be deployed on the left wing. Ruben Loftus-Cheek should also be on the pitch with him, behind the striker.

The three goals and two assists served in the previous four games suggested Leao was in electric form heading into the Roma game, but instead he struggled with being double teamed and was anonymous for virtually the entire game.

The doubt that hovered at the time of the substitution still remains valid, because Leao is one of the few players Milan have that is capable of very quickly turning a game around, and that is why some of the discontent was towards Pioli.

His detractors accuse him of having too little impact in the games that count, given his numbers in normal games versus the top-level matches, yet there is also a strong argument that there are only one or two sides in Europe that the winger wouldn’t start for.

We need to carefully observe the turn that events will take between now and the end of the season, the paper states, and that begins with today’s game against relegation-battling Sassuolo.