There's no question Milan deserves a better CB to pair up with Nesta.

I know he's God and there'll never be another him and all, but we should find a new Maldini. Milan had always been renowned for its extraordinary CBs in recent years, then came the last two/three seasons and we all know the story... nowadays there are a few teams that have a better central defense compared to us (at least IMO)... say Chelsea. neither Terry nor Carvalho are no where near Nesta, but as a pair they're one of the best. much better than Nesta-Kaladze. our management shouldn't have let this situation happen to the '#1 club in the world'.


100% agreed.

Kaladze has some similarities as Kalac , both take effects from the team performance , if all the team be in right mood , they 2 play good , we must say that Kaladze is exeptional in these moments , i didnt see his up and downs in ordinary days of the team too . if our team show some bad mood they will drop BADLY, something that we saw in these years many times , because there was so many moments that our team was in confusing conditions .


i think if we only reach to a constant spirit with a good team work Kaladze will be very good . with new players we will be in a better form for this .

these are very lazy days !!

Afternoon training has taken place.

The first 30 minutes or so saw the players doing stretching exercises and working on the abs.

Following this was a whole bunch of personalized work.

Zambrotta, Oddo, Emerson and Dida worked in the sand pit on stretches and aerobic work.

Brocchi, Flamini, Seedorf, Cardacio, Pirlo and Ambrosini did laps around the perimeter of the central pitch.

Antonini and Darmian worked in the sand pit.

Paloschi worked on strength exercises and running a course in the woods.

The other players worked in the gym.

There will be 2 training sessions tomorrow.

It's more often than that.

I think we need a CB that CAN do those things too when needed, maybe my expectations are too high.

No, but at times he looks like one.

And then there's me that says he's generally a liability, should have been sold this, last or the season before to raise money for a world class defender instead of Simic who should've got more time than he did. Sometimes he can be solid but he's consistently inconsistent which simply isn't good enough. Sure everyone has the odd bad day but he has them way too often.

isnt being a good defender and especially CB all about consistency? i mean i dont care how well he plays when you ignore his blunders, no team (at least of our stature, who want to challenge) can afford your starting CB to Gift a goal every 2nd game, thats not including all the other mistakes he consistently makes and isnt punished for. you just cant say "well kaladze is unlucky, when he makes a mistakes he always gets screwed for it", it's pretty simple you reap what you sow and the good defenders dont make the number of mistakes kaladze makes.

the guy is so lazy too, how many times does he foul guys because he doesnt want to keep up with him or leaves someone completely unmarked in the box when it's his man, then plays the "who was marking who?" act.

Man marking would cut that out completely, isn't that what the Invincibili and other teams at the time did? Why did we stop using it? I vaguely remember an old interview with Panucci where he named a couple of big teams that used the zonal marking system, including Real. Apart from defenders going maybe slightly out of their natural position I don't see any disadvantage with man marking, or any other advantage playing zonal. Anyone know much more about this?

I'm not sure man marking is wise. I think Zlatan + Cruz is better offensively than our of our CB partnerships are defensively, so they'd beat us for sure. In my opinion of course. But like you said, the disadvantage is people getting dragged out of position. Imagine Zlatan dragging Nesta out of defense leaving Kaladze on his own with Cruz, talk about a massacre.

^^ If memory serves, that actually happened in the first derby last year, Kurt.

Well this is the test for us. A real projection of whats to come

We don't have key offensive players but there is no reason our defense can't stand up.

Everything else is a bunch of excuses for which most people would be fired for. If this was another organization Ancelotti would have been shown the door a long time ago.

What excuses exactly? We have an injured crisis. That's simple fact. And frankly I think it's disgusting that some people want to put all the responsibility on Alberto Paloschi...

What excuses? Ancelotti plays with what he has. If we do not have Ivanovic by the time of this game (and I think we should)... we'll play Matteo Darmian.

We're missing Ronaldinho, Kaka, Inzaghi, Borriello, Pato, Nesta... don't tell me this doesn't have an effect on the team.

It has an effect, yes. But how many of those are defenders? 1. We lose 1 defender and get hammered by Chelsea, then lose to FC Crisis, that's worrying.

I like that, Kurt. Well done.

We played what kind of line-up against Chelsea? And we had forwards, and not put everything on Paloschi, I'm sure we would have scord against Man City. Paloschi had several good attempts at goal in that Man City game.

That is true that Paloschi did well, but Man City are missing 8 players for their game at the weekend, so they're having alot of injury worries themself - including both starting strikers and their best CB and MF. So they were hardly at full strength to beat us anyway.

Oh, did anybody know that match was apparently for a trophy?

If Milan got the trophy I'm sure it would have ended up in Maldini's place filled with a plant or something lol...

Either way, I'm fine with the 1-0 loss. Man City had three players injured in that match including the goalscorer Bojinov and I think Darius Vassell too... so if they wanna sacrifice all that for a trophy... and have more injuries on top of their injury hit squad fine...

It wasn't a serious thing for Milan... and plus I think the players probably were ordered to be cautious to avoid injuries.

I don't think it was an important trophy, but I think they did try to hard to win the game, 2 of the players went off for over-stretching, something that shouldn't be done in pre-season!

This morning's training has taken place.

The first part of training saw the rossoneri divided into two groups doing ball circulation drills with obstacles and stretching.

The keepers did some running, stretching and practice with the goalkeeping coaches (who now include Fiori).

There was also practice with crosses by Oddo, Antonini, Favalli, Zambrotta, Bonera, Janku and Darmian.

Kakà, Kaladze, Maldini, Borriello and Inzaghi trained in the gym, though Pippo did do some running outdoor as well.

There will be another training session this afternoon.

Darmian? Isn't he a CB?

we are trying to turn him to a CB and fullback ?

Darmian played RB in at least one of the U19 games and did rather well. I thought he was a CB too.

“We haven’t had any strikers at our disposal and so it was difficult to impose ourselves against Chelsea or Manchester City because we had no goal threat,” Maldini told the Milan Channel.

“If you don’t have strikers it completely changes the way you play and the team is constantly under pressure.

“Our friendlies could certainly have gone better, but we also have to remember who we have played against and the opposition’s preparations.

“There was no divide when we played Inter and Juventus and in fact we came out on top.”

Source


These words were spoken by Maldini.

And truer words have never been spoken! Will we solve our striker problem in the coming weeks is anyone's guess.

This afternoon's training has taken place.

The first part of training was the standard warmup and drills in which even Carletto took part.

The second part of training focused on individual work:

Gattuso, Flamini, Brocchi, Jankulovski and Cardacio ran laps of the central pitch with Filippo Galli.

Bonera worked on 20 meter sprints with Mauro Tassotti.

Ambrosini also worked on sprints.

Pirlo, Pato and Darmian worked in the sand pit. (Obvious typo by acmilan.com here, no idea why they put in Pato. maybe they mean viudez?)

Emerson ran laps around the raised pitch near the dressing room.

Abbiati and Kalac trained separately with Vecchi while Dida worked in the sand pit.

Nesta was also present at training and he along with Maldini, Kaladze, Kakà, Inzaghi and Borriello trained in the gym.

There will also be 2 training sessions tomorrow.

"Emerson ran laps around the raised pitch near the dressing room."

LOL. I don't know what's funny about that. Careful... don't run too fast might hurt your old legs...

Anyways, glad to see Nesta is training again... that'll be important. But as said, training in the gym doesn't indicate the player being fully fit.

Pato he is sooo good - such a beast that boy!
After playing an entire half of Football for his NT he flew all the way back to Italy (private jet I presume) just to take part in his clubs training as well.

Dedication and Loyality displayed at its finest!

LOL. He would have to fly on a supersonic jet to get back in time lol.

...Look no further than Serghnio, a prime example of this.
He was always mentioned in gym training.

Pato enjoys time difference!

Doesn't need a jet. He just has to spread his arms wide, recite "Up, up and away" and jump off a building. He's not the SuperDuck for no reason.

Super Jet

Hes a duck they swim... hes a fast swimmer

SuperDuck don't need no swimming.



SuperDuck just needs to want to be there.

[quote name='Giancarlo' date='Aug 12 2008, 08:32 PM' post='163091']
What excuses exactly? We have an injured crisis. That's simple fact. And frankly I think it's disgusting that some people want to put all the responsibility on Alberto Paloschi...

What excuses? Ancelotti plays with what he has. If we do not have Ivanovic by the time of this game (and I think we should)... we'll play Matteo Darmian.

We're missing Ronaldinho, Kaka, Inzaghi, Borriello, Pato, Nesta... don't tell me this doesn't have an effect on the team.
[/quote

Look in the real world managers and owners plot the future. Milan have had the same problems over the past 3 seasons. An aging team, no forwards, and a withering central defense. Recently no primary keeper

Its just flat out obvious. I could have told him how the team was going to do against Chelsea with the line up he used. Most of the critics of Milan have been writing the same article for the past two years on this.

The truth is the players you named, were the same players who couldn't qualify for the Champions League. WE have been without these guys consistently for the past couple years. Of course Ronaldinho and Pato being worthy recent acquistions. Borriello wasnt effective. Inzaghi and Nesta are injured every couple months. Kaka won the champions league for us and kept us afloat. But if what medical examinations are revealing about his condition, we might not be able to count on him either with his knee problems.

My point is that this shows how weak Milan are. And what you said above makes my point. All the top clubs in the world right now would have been able to field a great team against Chelsea. We have no one to fill the void. We have no depth and to many injuries.

What is flat out obvious is the refusal to accept the fact that we have many new young players coming in and we have revitalized our team this season. We have brought in major reinforcements and have reinforced this squad beyond any other Italian team, despite not qualifying for the Champions League. That's the fact. We have Abbiati, who is a class keeper, and should have been our primary keeper years ago.

Frankly it shouldn't matter what happened in that friendly. The only way to look is forward, and looking forward to getting two of our key stars back from the Olympics.



The truth of the matter is I can name a half dozen new players that will get us qualified for the Champions LEague. The fact of the matter is you deny certain acquisitions. You can't say for certain how Borriello is going to do. Personally I think Borriello will be far better than Gilardino. But that's my own personal opinion. We are bringing in reinforcements and a new defender.

My point is that the team is properly reinforced and is strong once again. What I said never made your point. You failed to justify your point. Many of the top clubs don't care about friendly games. It isn't important nor should we make it our imperative to put out a first rate team in friendly matches. What if we had injuries? We have great amounts of depth now, with recent acquisitions (Viudez and Cardacio add to this). The one thing we are lacking is defense but that will be cleared up.

We've increased our depth greater than that of Juventus or Inter-Milan.

And we have relatively few injuries compared to other teams in the Serie A. Inter-Milan is suffering from a massive injury crisis, and Adriano could be out for months now.

Heard the injury crisis has meant that Carletto might field the Uru-guys up front against Bologna.

This probably might be a failsafe, in case he feels, he needs to use Pato. The Ka-Pa-Ro trident might not be unleashed from the word go is what I hear. Carlo wants to tweak it...

The last Ka-Pa-Ro didn't look like it needed tweaking.

If we don't have a huge improvement on last season, and I'm talking top 3 at least. Carlo needs to go, he's been given too many chances already.

I think he knows what he's doing but he just needed the players to do it...

Carlo is definitely on probation this year, I agree. He has no excuses for not finishing top 3 this season. Barring some kind of psycho injury crisis, when we're left with no forwards/defenders, I think this team is strong enough to earn that position.

Even with the current injury crisis (no nesta, borriello, pippo, kaka)..I'd expect a 4th finish.

But this is the thing with Carlo.. Yeah, he was great, won a league title and a Champions League. Well, this isn't so great, my mom could have done it with the players he had at his disposal. But as soon as Sheva, Rui, Stam leave? He disappoints. He did win the Champions League again, thanks in large part to Kaka', but other than that he's really failed to devlier at all.

I'm not a fan. He seems to really heavily an individual brilliance rather than his team winning through the tactics he uses.

I think he relies on the entire team and plenty of other talents have been brought in during his time. I'd take him over any other. I really appreciate what Ancelotti has done for Milan over the past few years, and he's one of my favorites...

Any team is going to have players who stand out.

Milan recently: Kaka and Pirlo and Nesta
Jose's Chelsea: Drogba and Lamps and Terry
Liverpool: Gerrard and Torres
Barca: Messi and Xavi
Manchester: John O Shea... (he literally stands out.. )


Doesn't mean anything much really.

What I'm trying to say is that Man U/Chelsea, whoever, can afford to put out their 11 subs in some EPL games and go on to win, based on their managers tactics. Carlo struggles to beat the smallest of teams, even with his best XI.

I think it comes down to the tactics. I never saw Derby try to take on Chelsea with 11 players in their own halves. While teams like Messina would do exactly that.

And that's exactly why they had such a terrible defensive record. They stuck their whole team behind the ball when they came to Villa Park, they had 2 shots all game, one of those was from near the half-way line..

That would be an acceptable answer if we draw. But we often lose these games. How on earth you lose to a crap team that keeps 11 men behind the ball I'll never know..

Carletto is deadly boring. I'm a patient man but... 3 DMF's and Pirlo against City the other day? It's a ****ing friendly you uncreative bast***!!! Ancelotti has exceeded every limit... he has entirely thrown creativity out of his world... and even if I rate him, I wish with all my heart this is his last ever season with Milan, I never thought I could be bored so much by anyone...

Well we could have gone all out and end up with 3 injuries like Man City for some friendly game..

You are such a %&%&%&&^&*( meaniehead!!

I just don't see how Carlo's lasted this long. Top clubs can't afford failure for 2 years running, but now we're heading for a 3rd! Well, technically 4th!

I seriously doubt injuries have anything to do with the formation you choose to play with...


Ermm... 2nd? We won the CL in '06-'07 mate... I don't think that can be considered a failure even if we never challenged for the Scudetto to do that...