Milan 0, Carpi 0: U-turn

Berlusconi sacked Mihajlovic because he didn’t like the quality of football. Just think about that for a minute. Quality of football. If you saw this match, you’d know there was neither quality nor football. In 10 short days, Brocchi has had more influence on this side than I could have ever imagined, completely ridding the club of its new coach smell. He took a team that was playing some pretty good football and turned them completely around. Whereas under Mihajlovic, they would start well and end better, now they do neither. Last night, they started poor and ended just astonishingly badly. It was a complete u-turn.

Mauri didn't need such a poor performance from his teammates to stand out, he needed them to step up

There are literally three moments to know about in this match. The first was in stoppage time at the half, a ball was sent in, Balotelli tried to poke it into the net, but was a little late and got Belec’ face instead. Ouch. So that was a yellow for him. The cards that both he and Alex received in this match will see them both suspended for card accumulation for our trip to Verona on Monday.

The second moment would be when Brocchi substituted Bacca off in the 69th. Bacca was visibly angry, glaring at Brocchi and storming off straight to the dressing room. He also left the San Siro before the game was even over. So now, Brocchi has pissed of Bacca, Balotelli is suspended, and Niang is injured. We’ve gone from one of the most talented strike forces in the league to looking to Menez and Boateng as our saviors, neither who have given any indication of being able to save us thus far this season.

Once again, our youngest player saving us

The final moment was Donnarumma’s save in the 90th. Carpi only took six shots in all, two on target. And still we couldn’t put one of our 20 shots in the net, with only three on target. Because apparently Brocchi’s big ideas are to play keep away for 90 minutes. Milan had 77% possession, but did absolutely nothing with it. And he hasn’t even been paying attention, revisiting this 4-3-1-2 nightmare and re-learning at the expense of all of us that Boateng is not a trequartista. Is that really what you wanted to see, Berlusconi?

There were a couple of positives. Mauri came on in the 61st and was brilliant. He actually scored almost immediately, but it was called back for offside. It didn’t stop him from trying though, as he did not get the memo that this team was supposed to suck completely now. Locatelli also saw a few minutes, coming on in the 87th. I think Brocchi was responding to the horrific whistling and jeering of the small home crowd and tried to appease them with playing youth players.

What a shame for his debut to be in such a horrific match

But what everyone is talking about isn’t the game. Ahead of the game was a publicity stunt labeled #TEKITANKA. Apparently it was for an upcoming commercial for Nivea for Men, and actors dressed in Milan kits did some bizarre form of the Haka dance in front of actors dressed in Carpi kits. It was bad. And yet Milan’s actual performance for 90 minutes was worse. Think about it. Milan's professional players performed worse than actors pretending to be players.

Somewhere, Mihajlovic was laughing. Except knowing how much he cared about this team and how much work he put in trying to help them, he was probably crying. I think most Milan fans would have been crying, too, except that performances like this just leave us dead inside. We’ve seen way too many. So we go from hope to despair in just ten days. It’s a complete u-turn.

This post inspired by the music of STP’s “Dead and Bloated”

Our next match is

Verona vs. Milan

Monday, April 25 • 17:00 CEST (11am EDT)