Fonseca: ‘Milan did not follow the plan’ against Liverpool | OneFootball

Paulo Fonseca admits Milan did not follow the ‘plan’ prepared against Liverpool when attacking or defending, prompting them to ‘lose mental balance’ in the Champions League collapse.

The coach was already under pressure with two points from his first three Serie A rounds and hoped the 4-0 win over Venezia was the start of a new dawn, especially when Christian Pulisic put them in front within three minutes of the Champions League opener against Liverpool.

However, they conceded two identical goals from Ibrahima Konaté and Virgil van Dijk, both free headers on set plays, and Dominik Szoboszlai completed a counter-attack for 3-1.

“We played against Liverpool, who are a huge team. We started well, both attacking and defending, but then we conceded two goals from set plays that changed the game,” Fonseca told Sky Sport Italia.

“We lost our mental balance, because when the team lacks confidence, we develop problems and don’t do what we prepared in training.

“I told the players, you cannot make those mistakes in this kind of game. At the same time, I have to admit Liverpool are more of a team right now than we are, we need to keep working to have not 20 good minutes, but 70, 80, 90 minutes playing our football.

“After we conceded the second goal, the team stopped playing, and it becomes difficult after that.”

Fonseca admits Milan wandered off script

Considering both goals were practically identical from set plays, were Milan using zonal marking?

“The first goal was individual marking, we prepared that on their central defenders. That was the plan anyway,” shrugged Fonseca.

It was noted that this would be Rafael Leao against Trent Alexander-Arnold, but Milan barely gave the Portugal international any service and instead tended to go down the right. Was that part of Fonseca’s plan?

“It was something we prepared in the little time that we had, try to put Leao against their right-back. We did it once or twice in the match. What we prepared was to send Rafa one-on-one against him and we hardly did it.”

The team was also shaken by seeing Mike Maignan leave the field in tears after his third injury of the night, having already struggled before Fikayo Tomori crashed into his left knee.

Ex-Milan director Zvonimir Boban in the Sky Sport Italia studio asked that if Milan is moving to 4-3-3 with Tijjani Reijnders and Ruben Loftus-Cheek, are they really suited to that sort of system?

“I respect everyone’s opinion. I think we can play with a few different formations, but we are too weak defensively, poor in individual duels and making the wrong decisions,” replied Fonseca.

“I am trying to find the best characteristics of our midfielders. Loftus can be a 10 or an 8, Reijnders is not someone who can play next to Fofana. We are not playing 4-3-3, there are always three including Pulisic who cut inside.

“I think we had three or four good situations in the first half with Loftus and Pulisic, but we got the final ball wrong. This is a structure that I like with two in midfield, with Reijnders, Loftus and Pulisic combining, that is where we created the most dangerous situations.”

This was always going to be a difficult fixture to start the new Champions League format, but home advantage was utterly wasted and the performance sluggish.

While the 4-0 win over Venezia was positive, it remains their only clean sheet of the season, conceding nine goals in five games.

The mood is now dire going into Sunday’s Derby della Madonnina against city rivals Inter, which could prove decisive for Fonseca’s future at this point.