GdS: Shock therapy and the need for harmony – inside Fonseca and Leao’s ‘difficult relationship’ | OneFootball

Given that AC Milan’s game against Bologna today has been postponed, there will be more talk about Rafael Leao’s current moment.

As La Gazzetta dello Sport report, there is no ‘Leao saga’ in the eyes of the club. Paulo Fonseca repeated it for the umpteenth time after the match against Club Brugge: “With Leao there is no specific problem, the substitution is not a punishment but a tactical move. Rafa must see the substitution as normal and work to be able to help the team like everyone else.”

The crucial part of his words is the penultimate sentence: seeing the substitution as normal. Here the debate among the Rossoneri fans starts, this year more divisive than ever between those who want to be patient with the winger and those who are starting to imagine the team without him.

Leao and Fonseca are compatriots, but the feeling – at the end of October, therefore absolutely fluid and subject to revision – is that neither of them is solid beyond any reasonable doubt. The balance between the coach and the undisputed star of the team is ‘becoming increasingly delicate’.

Fonseca has gone for a different method to Stefano Pioli in order to get him to try and raise the bar, which the paper likes to ‘shock therapy’. He wants to understand how receptive and willing the player is to work and improve.

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At 25 years old the time has come for Leao to stop alternating between sensational performances and listless ones, especially with the No.10 shirt on his back and the highest salary in the squad.

Fonseca wants Leao to think about Milan before himself, and he wants to see him apply himself a lot in the non-possession phase. There are times when he has done it, others – like against Brugge – when it hasn’t happened.

The time when the coach would go to visit Leao at the Portuguese national team’s retreat at the European Championship is long gone. It seemed like the beginning of a journey and a virtuous relationship, but four months later things are a bit different.

Leao silencing the fans in Parma, spending the cooling break on the sidelines against Lazio, getting jeered by San Siro, being left out of the starting XI and not celebrating with the team under the Curva Sud have all generated headlines.

Photo by Marco Luzzani/Getty Images

There is certainly room to mend things, as Zlatan Ibrahimovic suggested before the game: “They are adults, they must take their responsibilities and that is what they are doing. Fonseca must be himself, he is the coach and certain issues must be resolved from within.”

It is almost obligatory that they find harmony, before we reach the point of no return. As games pass, Leao could be destined to sit on the bench more and the discomfort would increase. What is the point of collapse? The mercato.

Fonseca was shaky in the first part of the season, but now he is more stable. Leao’s path between now and May can take any direction, but everyone’s work is directed toward a single goal: to arrive at June with the problem solved.