Calcio Debate: Is Gilardino Good Enough For Milan?


Following Milan’s disappointing 2-1 defeat at Atalanta last night – Carlo Garganese highlights the individual performance of Alberto Gilardino and asks whether the player is good enough to play for the Rossoneri…


Anyone who watched the game in Bergamo last night will tell you that Alberto Gilardino was not the only Milan player to disappoint. Daniele Bonera and Alessandro Nesta had rings run round them by Antonio Langella, Kakha Kaladze made a disastrous error that resulted in Atalanta’s winner, Giuseppe Favalli was awful as usual, while Alexandre Pato looked like a school-kid and missed a glorious one-on-one.


Gilardino has been under-fire for quite some now and it has become increasingly obvious for the past two years now that the striker is just simply not good enough for a club of the stature of Milan.


This does not mean that Gilardino is a bad player – he proved at Parma when he scored 23 times in consecutive Serie A seasons that at smaller and mid-table teams (even those fighting for UEFA Cup qualification) he can be a superbly useful player.


The biggest problem of all is that Gila just does not have the technical ability required to play for one of Europe’s giants, more so a team like Milan who base their game on these qualities.


The 25-year-old has no skill, he cannot create an opportunity for himself and in simple terms he is what in England is called a “lumbering centre forward”. Filippo Inzaghi has none of these attributes either, but what he does have, or did in his prime, is brilliant striker intelligence.


This is not the case for Gilardino. His movement is abysmal, in fact he is almost always static. His anticipation is poor, and so are his reactions. In order to be a penalty-box striker, these things are vital and this explains why Inzaghi is the most prolific goalscorer in the history of European competition.


We often hear arguments from Gilardino-supporters of how he scored 17 goals in Serie A in his first season at Milan, that he hit 12 last campaign, and that he has six to his name this year.


However, how many of these goals were against the top teams?


Well I will tell you.


In 2005/06, of Gilardino’s 17 goals, none were scored against the Big Four. Gila failed to hit the back of the net in both games against Juve, Inter and Roma. All of his strikes were against mid-table and relegation-threatened opposition such as Treviso, Reggina, Messina and Cagliari.


In 2006/07 he scored just twice in six games against the three other teams in the Champions League places (Inter, Roma and Lazio). And one of these, against Inter, came when Milan were already being thumped 4-1 by their city rivals and had nothing to play for but pride.


Finally this season Gila has failed to hit the back of the net against any of the big teams; Inter, Roma and Juve.


His record in the Champions League is even worse. In 2005/06 he failed to hit the back of the net in 10 games as Milan reached the semi-final. He scored just twice in 11 matches last year, while there has been a very slight improvement this term with two strikes in the group stages.


What this surely tells us is that Gilardino, when faced by stronger opposition and better defenders, is simply not up to the task.


When he plays against smaller Serie A sides he can hold his own, and it is against these teams that he accumulates all of his goals. However against top-class and world-class players it just doesn’t look like the 25-year-old has the ability.


Quite why Milan continue to insist that Gilardino is the right player for them I simply don’t understand.


Carlo Garganese