Fonseca criticizes Milan players’ attitude: “Lack of will to play defense as a team”

It has been a difficult start to the season and AC Milan’s adventure for Paulo Fonseca, who has only taken one point from his first two games. After the match, the manager admitted that there seems to be a very serious problem in the team.

Milan put on another weak performance on Saturday evening, when Parma took control of the game from the first minute. Not only in terms of possession, because they even scored a goal less than two minutes before the end of the match.

Ultimately, the Rossoneri were punished for their many mistakes, and in a post-match interview with DAZN (via MilanNews), Fonseca shared his thoughts on what went wrong, admitting there seemed to be an attitude problem among the players.

In the first half you ran out of time, despite the pressure…

“It’s hard to explain. It doesn’t start with Musah, it starts further down the pitch. In general, we played very poorly in defence, you can’t win when you defend like that. We didn’t defend as a team, but we also played badly individually. We were always late with the pressing, we always left space, we didn’t do a good job of preventive marking. So many things went wrong in defence, you can’t win a match like that when you make so many mistakes and allow a team like Parma to create so many chances.”

Difficulty in pressing attack…

“I have to say that I am always the main one responsible for what happens to the team, I take responsibility. But it seems clear to me that there is a collective problem of defensiveness and aggression. You can just look at the defenders, but the defenders suffer a lot because of the ease with which others play.”

Is it a problem of attitude? Characteristics? Players getting used to it again?

“Everything, I think that’s it. This team has a general problem. In the game against Torino we didn’t press too high and we had problems. Today we tried to make our players press high and we had problems. When others come out of the pressure it’s difficult to stay compact and recover. When we recover we are a passive team. There are many things, for me it’s a problem of attitude, energy and lack of desire to defend as a team.”

Did you expect to have so many problems after the preparation period?

“No. The truth is that we had a good pre-season, but now we are here, in our reality. It is always easier to play against big teams, you are more motivated. We come here, in our reality, and we have a change that is difficult to understand. During the week, when we prepare our strategies, the team is doing well. The match comes and we start like this, it is difficult to explain.”

Milan will face Lazio away from home and while few would have predicted it a few weeks ago, it is now a must-win game for the Rossoneri. Anything less would put the team in a very difficult position going forward.