It is always amazing to me how a player like Luka Modrić gets derided for his age and disparaged for some apparent lack of hustle and then produces like no other mid that has played for Milan in recent times and suddenly becomes the savior. He, more than anyone else, except for maybe Mike Maignan, has kept Milan in matches and produced more scoring chances than anyone else. If, and there is still a long way to go, Milan challenges for the title and/or makes the Champion's league it will be primarily the responsibility of Luka Modrić. With a strong assist for the coach. When Luka Modrić can no longer produce he should retire but, from the way he is playing, that could be sometime after 2028. One other thing. I have never, even in spurts, seen Pulisic play the kind of defense he played today. He was only on for a short time and did not do much going forward but he did produce a defensive play that is worthy of any mid or defender ever to play the game. Now, if Milan can just put three or four more performances together, we will really have something to cheer for.
If you are talking about today's match then the correct place to place the "blame" is on the poor refereeing. I will even go further: I am not much for conspiracy theories but today's referee basically gave the match to Inter. The second yellow he gave was not even a foul and it cost Juve any chance at winning and they still manged to be in the match until very late when their legs just gave out. The refereeing in Italy often makes MLS referees look great. The "trick" for any team, except maybe Inter, is to play conservatively and keep the referees out of the match. I enjoyed today's match right up to the point where the ref decided that Juve deserved to lose.
If Milan can, somehow, cure the problem of underperforming but getting a draw and turn half of those draws into wins then Milan will become almost unstoppable. But, until then, those of us that follow Milan will just half to be prepared to endure the continuous under performance that plagues us. Getting a few players back to full health would help but that is not the only problem. Even the almighty Mike has his moments of total brain farts that cost us. But we still have a huge amount of luck. It is said that it is better to be lucky than good but, in Milan's case, the "lucky" gets overwhelmed by bad so there is no real good to go with the luck. I keep hearing that the "goal" for Milan is getting back to European football but they live too close to the edge for me to feel comfortable about that. I am discouraged about this and I do not really discourage easily. I just hope that these poor matches where we get a point would stop. I wonder if it just might be better to lose a few so we can get back to the free flowing football we saw at and near the start of the season. Right now Milan is NOT fun to watch and I mostly watch football for fun. Maybe my watching jinxes Milan but I am unwilling to abandon them at this point.
******** this POS team, the players, the staff, coaches and the organization. Pathetic laughing stock.
I've been following this "team" since somewhat before Pulisic joined. And each year and each season I've become more and more disappointed. They have changed coaches at least three times in that period and each time there seemed to be an improvement that pretty quickly deteriorated back to average or slightly below average and now they have fallen into a pattern where they, each and every week, manage to play down to the opposition no matter how poor that opponent is. It seems that Milan only wants to avoid defeat, which they failed at today, but winning is something they simply do not strive for. I wonder, quite often, if the main interest of Milan's players and staff is setting the league record for the number of draws in a season. Will they actually make the Champion's league this year? I think so BUT, if they do not actually try a few times to win a match they could, quite easily, move back to where fighting for European play is there only goal. While Milan has great support it does seem that even their fans are perfectly happy to watch mediocre to poor football. I think that a strong show of displeasure might be what is required to produce play that at least seems like the players and coaches care. A mid match walkout or a simple dead silence for an entire match might get noticed. But Milan's fans are, apparently, also perfectly happy with the underperformance and do not seem to be inclined to actually protest their team's lack of effort and horrendous lack of production. The team's management seems quite happy that Milan is average to below average and they do not look to be moved by the poor play. I believe that Milan's fans and supporters need to do something to make the players and coaches ashamed of the lack of production and poor play. Remember: "When you are booed by your own fans you have real work to do." So fans of Milan need to start booing the team if for no other reason than to make them mad. Boo when they enter the field boo when they are in possession and boo when they leave the field. The ONLY cheers should come from successful play that results in a victory and no victory by less than 2 goals should be acceptable. Admittingly, they started strongly but they tripped over their own feet. The league is actually pretty weak this year and Milan keeps losing to teams in the lower half. BTW: I do not know if a coaching change is needed but the current coaching staff sure has Milan playing like they have no fire and no desire and are perfectly happy with being average. They are average and proud of it!
Well, Milan won today but it was neither dominating or convincing. They stumbled through most of the match and scored two VERY late goals. This team looked, for most of the match, like they were the ones battling relegation rather than the one vying for the top spot. I keep hoping that Milan will put an entire match together where they play nearly up to their ability but they seem to enjoy??? playing down to whatever the other team is doing. The dominate theme always seems to be "let's keep it close to keep people interested" but they also give the truly bad teams in Italy too much respect. They are playing afraid. But they did win and I saw a few moments of real positive attitude and effort hat I can only hope continues. Pulisic seemed to be playing pretty well and he played most of the match and seemed a bit upset to be subbed fairly late in the match. That tells me he is healthy and craving more playing time. His shot is still a bit off but it would be real good for him to go on a tear late in the season. I feel better about Milan but they need to step up the play for the run down the stretch. One good match (even one like this that was only marginally good) does not make a season and Milan badly needs to string some wins together. I do wonder why they play better on the road than they do at home. It seems that for Milan home matches are actually away matches. Maybe the Milan fans need to show up in opposing colors to fool the players into thinking they are playing away and they need to stay at hotels before matches rather than staying at home. MY dog even started a happy dance after Milan's second goal, but that could have been just him needing to go out.