Square pegs in round holes: Fonseca’s strange selection decisions vs. Juventus | OneFootball

While Paulo Fonseca deserves praise for getting his tactical approach right in games like the Inter and Real Madrid wins, he also continues to make some strange decisions.

MilanPress have published a piece which casts some doubt not just on the selections in terms of the starting line-up, but the roles of the players that he chose and their instructions during the game.

It seems that Milan are severely lacking in balance. In aiming to shore up the defence they lost all attacking threat against Juve, but then when they play with the handbrake off they concede goals like the three in Cagliari.

We can detect some problems in the construction of the squad, with signings like Ruben Loftus-Cheek, Yunus Musah, Emerson Royal and Alvaro Morata arousing some doubt. There have been some below-average performances by individual players too, yet Fonseca still shoulders some blame.

For example, Tijjani Reijnders’ position in the 4-4-2 in the non-possession phase (a good part of the first half) did not allow him to show his quality between the lines, neither in the transition phase nor in regular possession.

Rafael Leao’s narrow position together with Alvaro Morata did not pay off, because we know that the Portuguese’s strength is to start wide and attack the area, getting in isolation with the opposition full-back/centre-back.

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It did not bring benefits in the non-possession phase either because the press was often triggered late (not only by Leao) and it allowed the Bianconeri to play out. Perhaps this in itself was an instruction, so as not to be over-aggressive and leave big spaces.

Morata reverted to type in the sense that he did a lot of the dirty work without actually having any meaningful touches inside the Juve box. The team really struggled without the creative presence of Christian Pulisic, whose free-roaming role often links the attack together.

Yunus Musah was played wide on the right and he had the task of trying to recreate Samuel Chukwueze’s (or Pulisic’s) attacking output up against Cambiaso, but that is not his strength either.

All this confusion and rigidity in tactical tasks seemed more like an attempt to limit the damage in a game declared ‘important, but not decisive’ when a win was needed to hang onto any faint Scudetto dream.