Reports: Fonseca considers benching Calabria, Theo and Leão against Lazio, Fofana and Chukwueze to start | OneFootball

Paulo Fonseca during training at Milanello. (@acmilan.com)

Paulo Fonseca is ready to send a message to his star players who have shown bad attitudes in the first games.

The Rossoneri started the season very poorly, just barely avoiding defeat at San Siro against Torino, before getting outplayed by Parma away from home, and they only have 1 point from 6.

On Saturday night (20:45 CEST kickoff), Milan take on Lazio at the Olimpico, and it seems that Fonseca is planning a sort of revolution in the starting XI, keeping 2 of the most prominent Milan players in recent years on the bench.

As reported by La Gazzetta dello Sport’s Luca Bianchin and Sky Italia’s Peppe Di Stefano, in the last days Fonseca tried in training a line-up which does not include Davide Calabria, Theo Hernández and Rafael Leão. The three players received a lot of criticism for their performances against Torino and Parma, and so Fonseca is strongly considering to drop them against Lazio, also to send a message.

Should that happen, Filippo Terracciano and Emerson Royal will be the starting fullbacks, with Fikayo Tomori and Strahinja Pavlović ahead of Mike Maignan. In midfield, there would be Youssouf Fofana, who still doesn’t have 90 minutes in his legs, alongside Tijjani Reijnders and Ruben Loftus-Cheek in the trequartista role. Attack would have Samuel Chukwueze and Christian Pulisic on the wings, with Noah Okafor starting in the middle, being the only available striker apart from the newly-signed Tammy Abraham (Álvaro Morata and Luka Jović are both injured and not in the squad).

Theo Hernández during training at Milanello. (@acmilan.com)

This is basically a must-win for Fonseca in order to gain the trust of the fans and of his own players. There is no doubt benching the biggest starts would be a brave choice, but Paulo is ready sacrifice the individual quality of Theo and Rafa for what he believes would be a better team performance.

Probable XI vs Lazio: Mike Maignan; Emerson Royal, Fikayo Tomori, Strahinja Pavlović, Filippo Terracciano; Youssouf Fofana, Tijjani Reijnders; Samuel Chukwueze, Ruben Loftus-Cheek, Christian Pulisic; Noah Okafor.