GdS: Possession, transitions and individuals – Fonseca and Conceicao’s styles compared | OneFootball

AC Milan have had two head coaches this season in Paulo Fonseca and Sergio Conceicao, and the fact is both have failed to find the magic formula.

La Gazzetta dello Sport compares Conceiçao’s Milan side to a leopard, in the sense that they changed everything without actually changing anything. His team is very different from Fonseca’s and in fact, those two are nothing alike.

Milan under Fonseca wanted the ball, the same players under another Portuguese coach leave it to their opponents, as seen by Como’s domination of possession on Saturday. A question arises, do Milan have a problem with the way they play?

The attacking data

The Expected Goals data makes for interesting reading, the stat aims to measure the goal opportunities created in a match in terms of their quality and danger.

Conceiçao’s Milan creates 1.67xG per match, against Fonseca’s 1.64xG. Is it because of the counter-attack? No: 0.25xG on the counter for Conceicao against 0.24xG under Fonseca.

The data for xG from set pieces (0.43 against 0.42 in the Fonseca era) and from open play (1.24 against 1.22) are also practically identical.

Not only that, three of the four matches in which Milan produced more xG are in the Conceiçao era: the Supercoppa Italiana derby, Milan-Cagliari soon after and the comeback win over Lecce.

It means that Milan are a prisoner of their own limitations and cannot find a way to be what it could be: one of the best teams in the league, especially from an attacking standpoint.

On paper, they have everything in Tijjani Reijnders, Rafael Leao, Christian Pulisic and Santiago Gimenez to create and score, even Samuel Chukwueze, Joao Felix and Tammy Abraham from the bench.

Yet, every game is a lottery: you don’t know what will happen. Reijnders and Pulisic are consistent, for the others it’s better to accept that they will be up and down.

The differences

The team are different compared to the months under Fonseca, and it mostly boils down to how he and his compatriot have contrasting ways of viewing posssession.

A zoom on the data makes it clear. Under the former, Milan held the ball for an average of 14 seconds and made 4.6 passes before giving the ball to the opponents. The current coach cut that data to 11 seconds and 3.8 passes, confirming that he is not interested in possession.

What matters more is doing well in the defensive phase, not getting caught in transition and staying balanced. The old Milan shot almost 4 times per game from build-up (not a counter-attack or set piece), but this has declined to 2.5 under Conceicao.

On the other hand, counter-attack shots have increased by 33%. The trends are clear: Fonseca’s Milan played better, Conceiçao’s has more character, as the six comebacks testify. Everyone chooses according to taste.

The players

The players see the team’s DNA change and adapt. Reijnders dribbles less, Theo Hernandez stays deeper and seems to have no energy to counter and Youssouf Fofana often ends up on the bench.

Felix would probably be better suited to Fonseca’s football, but he hasn’t shared a dressing room with him for a single day. Leao under Conceiçao would have everything to be fundamental but accelerates less than the Milan fans would like, perhaps less than he could.

Milan thus remain a half-team, that creates and destroys everything (and then maybe recreates from scratch, in a comeback). The team changed face when the calendar flipped to 2025, yet the same consistencies remain.