08-22-2012, 12:38 PM
(This post was last modified: 08-22-2012, 12:41 PM by ACMILAN1983.)
Welcome to Pazzini and also Zapata who I think I never welcomed. Can't say the deal excites me, as like many I think the 7m makes the deal seem better for Inter, but either way what's happened has happened. At least we get a player for a role we need and removed a player that personally I didn't value very much given his attitude, lack of fitness and individuality. Like Ronaldinho and Ibra, Cassano isn't a team player, but rather a player whose individual quality is often relied on to produce great moments.
There's so much talk on amongst Milan fans about our lack of creativity, which is fair as over the past 20 years we've had creativity in abundance. However, for me this isn't my biggest concern, mostly because of the new balance of our game. Creative talents are a necessity when you play a brand of football that relies either on individual ability or if you play a strong possession game where you need players who can unlock opponents at any given moment. We no longer play the football we played in the 90's or even in the 2000's, where we'd either rely on individual talents or we'd play a possession based game heavily reliant on the individual quality in our side unlocking opposing defences. In reality, if we do this we'll fail as quite a few teams in Serie A alone appear to have better individual talents than us.
Now, our game must be based on movement through the team and coordination of the group. Ultimately, we no longer rely or can rely on individual quality, but instead it's up to Allegri to use what he has and build a system where the players each perform their role in coordination with each other to cause problems for opponents. If anything, this season is both the biggest test Allegri has had to face until now, but as Vialli recently said also the most stimulating challenge, as the club is much more reliant on his abilities than ever before. It's no longer up to us to look at players on the pitch to provide the creativity to unlock opponents, now we rely on the coach's creativity to change things from the dugout to unlock opponents.
In my opinion, if preseason has shown anything, it's that we're working towards the right direction to do this, starting off by playing a modern brand of football working towards quick attacking moves where the whole side moves forward together. We still need the odd player who can control the direction of our game as well, but this is exactly what Montolivo will offer with hopefully others coming in come January or next summer (Muntari also did this quite well last year). With the exception of the 1-0 loss to Juve in the TIM trophy (bearing in mind this was 45 minutes, not 90), we've scored in every match in preseason if I'm correct, against mostly teams that are in better shape than us and ahead of us both in terms of development of the side as well as preseason training. This I would like to say is also mostly without relying on Cassano.
Where I am concerned is our record defensively. The Real defeat as well as the recent Juve match really showed we're quite a mess here. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I do think this is a result of our midfield having lots of dynamic runners, but no player who can play the holding role, except the ageing and clearly past his best Ambro. This exposes our defence, which on its own doesn't have the individual quality it had in the past to compensate for this weakness. While a holder alone won't raise us to the level we desire, it will at least help us become stronger in midfield making it more difficult for opponents to get at our backline. We all know the names we've been linked to during the summer, such as Diarra or Strootman, but as I said yesterday, I personally would go for Nainggolan. Allegri knows him from his time at Cagliari, he's played 3-4 really solid and good years in Serie A and like Rino in the past, is often capable of covering for up to two players with his workrate. He's been one of the best mezzala in Serie A in recent years, but like Vidal for Juve is versatile enough to be used in other roles, such as a holder. More impressive is he's a really strong tackler and interceptor of the ball, but also a very competent player on the ball too, with a very good passing success rate. Personally, I don't see a better alternative that is attainable than Nainggolan, who at 24 is just the right age to step up and play at the highest level.
There's so much talk on amongst Milan fans about our lack of creativity, which is fair as over the past 20 years we've had creativity in abundance. However, for me this isn't my biggest concern, mostly because of the new balance of our game. Creative talents are a necessity when you play a brand of football that relies either on individual ability or if you play a strong possession game where you need players who can unlock opponents at any given moment. We no longer play the football we played in the 90's or even in the 2000's, where we'd either rely on individual talents or we'd play a possession based game heavily reliant on the individual quality in our side unlocking opposing defences. In reality, if we do this we'll fail as quite a few teams in Serie A alone appear to have better individual talents than us.
Now, our game must be based on movement through the team and coordination of the group. Ultimately, we no longer rely or can rely on individual quality, but instead it's up to Allegri to use what he has and build a system where the players each perform their role in coordination with each other to cause problems for opponents. If anything, this season is both the biggest test Allegri has had to face until now, but as Vialli recently said also the most stimulating challenge, as the club is much more reliant on his abilities than ever before. It's no longer up to us to look at players on the pitch to provide the creativity to unlock opponents, now we rely on the coach's creativity to change things from the dugout to unlock opponents.
In my opinion, if preseason has shown anything, it's that we're working towards the right direction to do this, starting off by playing a modern brand of football working towards quick attacking moves where the whole side moves forward together. We still need the odd player who can control the direction of our game as well, but this is exactly what Montolivo will offer with hopefully others coming in come January or next summer (Muntari also did this quite well last year). With the exception of the 1-0 loss to Juve in the TIM trophy (bearing in mind this was 45 minutes, not 90), we've scored in every match in preseason if I'm correct, against mostly teams that are in better shape than us and ahead of us both in terms of development of the side as well as preseason training. This I would like to say is also mostly without relying on Cassano.
Where I am concerned is our record defensively. The Real defeat as well as the recent Juve match really showed we're quite a mess here. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I do think this is a result of our midfield having lots of dynamic runners, but no player who can play the holding role, except the ageing and clearly past his best Ambro. This exposes our defence, which on its own doesn't have the individual quality it had in the past to compensate for this weakness. While a holder alone won't raise us to the level we desire, it will at least help us become stronger in midfield making it more difficult for opponents to get at our backline. We all know the names we've been linked to during the summer, such as Diarra or Strootman, but as I said yesterday, I personally would go for Nainggolan. Allegri knows him from his time at Cagliari, he's played 3-4 really solid and good years in Serie A and like Rino in the past, is often capable of covering for up to two players with his workrate. He's been one of the best mezzala in Serie A in recent years, but like Vidal for Juve is versatile enough to be used in other roles, such as a holder. More impressive is he's a really strong tackler and interceptor of the ball, but also a very competent player on the ball too, with a very good passing success rate. Personally, I don't see a better alternative that is attainable than Nainggolan, who at 24 is just the right age to step up and play at the highest level.