Milan rocked by injuries Thursday 1 February, 2007

Milan have suffered a double blow after Pippo Inzaghi and Nelson Dida picked up injuries in their Coppa Italia semi-final with Roma.

The Rossoneri have been plagued by injuries this season and their problems are not easing after last night’s 3-1 loss.

Dida has picked up a shoulder knock just weeks after he made his Serie A comeback, following a two-month lay-off because of knee ligament damage.

The Brazilian has undergone a preliminary examination and is set to be out for at least a month, although pessimistic reports suggest that the goalkeeper’s season may be over.

The No 1, who has yet to sign a new contract with the Rossoneri, fell on his shoulder after making a fine save from Daniele De Rossi. He’ll undergo more tests over the next few days.

Marco Storari, who joined the club from Messina last month, may now make his debut against Ascoli at the weekend.

Turning to Inzaghi, the striker limped off the Olimpico turf just 14 minutes after coming on as a substitute for Massimo Ambrosini.

The No 9 suffered a muscle strain which may keep him in the treatment room for three or four weeks.

Milan will visit Celtic on February 20 in the Champions League and Coach Carlo Ancelotti is desperate to have him back for that last 16 clash.

The Rossoneri only have Inzaghi, Alberto Gilardino and Ricardo Oliveira available in attack for Europe as Ronaldo is Cup-tied.

(channel4.com)

Oh...

GREAT!!!

fu*ked up.

UCL is gonna be really tough
we'll need alot of luck to beat celtic

what is all this crap with dida getting hurt so much? the man had a flair thrown in his eye and finished out the season.

Luckily we managed to sign Storari, otherwise, with Kalac injured, we'd had to play Fiori. The same with Ronaldo, even though he cannot play in the Champions League.

Storari is a good goalie so I'm not as worried as I was when Dida was injured the first time and we had to play with Kalac

Pippo getting injured could be a good thing, now maybe Oli can finally play next to Gila against Ascoli

Come on, we all know that Carlo is going to play with one striker hte next match and also against Cetlic

THE INJURY SITUATION
2/1/2007 3:40:00 PM
Medical director Jean Pierre Meersseman gives an update on the current injury situation and the condition of the Rossoneri's newest arrival

Milan medical director Jean Pierre Meersseman takes a look at the current injury situation and at the condition of the newest arrival in red and black, Ronaldo.

As far as Kakha Kaladze goes: 'the defender is doing well and will be available in time for Ascoli. He seems to have overcome any problems. He trained well this morning and is no longer experiencing any pain, so he should be recovered in time for Ascoli.' On the other hand, his partner in crime Alessandro Nesta, will need a bit more time before he is back on the field. Meersseman said: 'He is doing better. According to the initial evaluation, it will be another month before he can return. He is preparing but when he has a problem with his tendon he must respect the natural time needed to recover. We hope that his injury will be totally resolved by the first day of March and to have him available to play between March 5 to 10.'

Cristian Brocchi is close to coming off the injury list: 'I just spoke to Cristian and he is doing well in training. He has no more pain and we can even hope that he will be ready in time to go to Ascoli. However, we don't want to force things so if he feels even a little pain again then we won't have him play. It depends on what he says as well, but in any case from a technical point of view everything is ok.' Serginho will also return at about the same time as Nesta: 'He is doing truly well. He is back from Brazil and started running again. Certainly, it's only his second day back and it's too soon to start jumping with joy but the visit with his surgeon went very well. He can start doing more intensive training and, if everything continues to go well, he will be back approximately between March 10 and 15.'

Then a final word about Ronaldo: 'He is doing better than he was yesterday, he only had some small problems to resolve. Today he underwent a more intense training session, so I hope that the time is shortening. I thought that we would need at least a month before seeing him on the field, but today we can hope for an even faster comeback. Ronaldo needs to train a bit and do some basic preparations. However, it is already a positive thing that he is training without any type of problems. We hope he will return in the upcoming days. He must do some strength and aerobic work, basic kind of preparations.'

He didn't say anything about Pippo and Dida. Strange...

Storari will be a good replacement for Dida so no worries there, obviously inzaghi being injured is a concern as we are running out of fit and available strikers so it will probably be the xmas tree formation for the ascoli game.
I hope pippo will be fit for the celtic games as we surely need to progress in this seasons ucl!!

Oli should be playing next to Gila. No more xmas tree we play badly with it especially with 2 defensive mids

Well not just minutes to oliveira, but aubameyang should have also some minutes on the field, we can see if the kid has potential and perhaps he becomes a hero or something , you never know.

Thats what I would like to think, unfortunately carlo is in charge and anything could happen!!!!

As our sponsor would say. 'Impossible is nothing'

Why play the Christmas tree when we have at least two fit strikers. And when we play the Christmas tree we don't play Gourcuff with Kaka behind the striker - IMO that would give us the pace we need upfront. Seedorf would be better playing behind them as he is too slow to play further up the field.

Good point

The next time we play the xmas tree it should look like this

Oddo--Bonera--Maldini--Janku
-----Rino---Pirlo---Seedorf-----
--------Gourcuff--Kaka---------
--------------Oliveira------------

This is the only way I could see it working

No offence to ur post .. But the team, as a whole cant play this formation.

I dont mean to act like 'mr. know it all' .. We need certain players that can play it

Goucuff is too young and everyone seems to think he has it in him to be a part of the first XI, he has potential, but it is too early for him.

+1

Because when we play with 2 defencive mids it works so well?

Ok so switch Seedorf with Gourcuff, that way he won't have the pressure of playing in that position.

But playing Gattuso and Brocchi together is far worse then starting Gourcuff.

It's not who Carlo should field to accomidate this formation .. It's who he needs to bring in.

There r so many games that Carlo had tried out the x-tree formation this season .. Check out how the players react in certain situations ... It isn't about Seedorf ahead of Gourcuff .. Or Broochi and Gattuso pairing ..

I mean .. Do we have a striker able to play alone upfront and score on a regular basis ? Do we have width ? Is our defence reliable and doesnt suffer under pressure ? Does the team play with enough speed to score from a counter attack ? etc etc etc .. These r things we lack BIG time .. the x-tree formation wont work, with the players that we have at the moment.

Those are good points, but if it was tried with Oli instead og Gila I think it would work out much better then at has this season.

Don't forget that we played this formation in 02/03 that season we had no fullbacks what-so-ever.

We had Sergio back in 02/03 and Stam/Billy played RB

Sergio did not have his best year back then plus... Stam was not a Milan player and Billy was never a RB!!

Stam and Billy are not fullbacks and they don't help much in attack. Sergio didn't always start in 02/03 because Maldini sometimes still played on the left

We had Sheva ,better defence and our key midfielders were in good shape. With current Milan Oli wouldn't have made much difference

U cant compare 02/03 w/ this season, han .. Rivaldo, Inzaghi, Shevchenko, Rui Costa, Seedorf

But look at this team now; Oli, Gila, Kaka, Seedorf, Gourcuff (ahem WHO ?!)

The options we had back then far exceeds the options we have now. Inzaghi back then would guarentee a goal per game .. Now he would guarentee a goal per month (thats IF we r lucky) .. I mean, in 02/03 Milan had built a team to play certain formations .. Recently Milan has been playing w/ two upfront and the team has been molded to fit that formation .. Other than that, Milan has tried, but we all saw the team fail in that respect.

That season we were playing with Simič as RB, Maldini and Nesta as CB and Kaladze as LB (this was also our line-up in CL final against Juve). Serginho at that time didn't play in defence. He was always used in midfield and as said above Stam wasn't our player at that time.

The problem is not so much the formation or the players (offcourse nobody is getting any younger , but still ). Bigger problem is that we are playing the same type of football for about 5 years, so now every team knows how to play against us and which players to limit - and if they do so, we struggle.

Well what do u suppose the solution would be solve this

We've been going on and off - about this topic since the summer, b4 the season started ..

Each has his own solution to solving this, mine is the only way to play the formation is with certain qualities that Milan needs to aquire ..

Oups I really tought Stam won the CL with us

As for Billy not an RB for sure but he played several times in that position!

Simic??? He wasn't even on the bench!

Billy played the final against la Juve as a RB!

I believe with Oddo and R9 we got that quality and now ot's a matter of time to see things back to the "normal" (I mean Milan wining every thing )

But I stll dont understand why some of you are still talking about that xmas tree formation? IMO Milan HAVE play with 2 strikers!

Well... he did but he was as effective as Shevchenko would have been in that position! We were discussing the lack of full-backs back then and Costacurta is definitely not a RB.

Milan plays w/ 2 strikers .. And I like the way they play w/ 2 strikers ... I was just explaining how the team cant play the x-tree formation w/ the current players we have!

Even w/ R9 and Oddo .. We still need certain players to make that work.

As far as the 2 striker formation is concerned, we r good to go