Evaluating AC Milan’s friendly tournament in the USA: Niang the best, but defence is a nightmare
Vincenzo Montella is now travelling back to Italy alongside his team, thinking about what’s working and what still needs to be settled ahead of the beginning of the new season.
As our pundit Federico Albrizio points out, Montella is shaping up a team with an offensive mentality. AC Milan played some quality football against all their opponents and keeping the ball possession is definitely helping some players to build some self-confidence which seemed lost last season.
M’Baye Niang put down the best individual performances. The former Genoa ace was deployed as centre forward and winger. Giacomo Bonaventura was also played in different roles (mainly winger and centre midfielder) with the Italian who created many goal chances for his teammates. He can be the team’s technical leader of the diavoli next campaign.
Youngster Niccolò Zanellato’s personality was also impressing, though the 18-year-old midfielder will return to the Primavera team for the entire duration of the 2016-17 campaign.
However, even if AC Milan’s style seemed to be slightly improved, there are still some problems that Montella is urged to fix. Defenders are still losing too many balls when building the action from the back and eight goals allowed in just three games are definitely not in line with a team that aim to return to European football next season.
It is worth mentioning that Cristian Zapata was injured during the tournament and Rodrigo Ely also sustained an injury during the rossoneri stay in the US.
In the end, just like it happened last year, AC Milan don’t have enough players available for the entire campaign with subs who have not the same quality of starters. Each time Montella made a substitution the quality on the pitch was dramatically decreasing, a problem that the club, not Montella, is urged to solve buying new recruits as soon as possible.
