Milan arrived in New York Thursday evening and immediately got to work Friday morning, continuing their preseason training and beginning their promotional fun in the city. Captain America, Pulisic, was called to return to duty a day earlier with an appearance on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon on Thursday evening, then on CBS Mornings with Zlatan Ibrahimović on Friday morning, both to help promote this match. Manchester City have already been in the U.S. for a week, and have already played their first match, a 4-3 loss to Celtic in North Carolina on Wednesday. So they will have less jet lag, and will be looking for revenge when Milan meets Man City in Manhattan (technically, it's at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, but that ruins the whole alliteration thing.)
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| Ready or not, here Milan are. |
Pep Guardiola and Paulo Fonseca have met before. Most notoriously, Fonseca's Shakhtar snapped Pep's 29 match undefeated streak in the Champions League while qualifying the Ukrainian side for the Round of 16. People may know about this, because this was when Fonseca donned his infamous Zorro costume. So I really doubt Guardiola has any intentions of his reigning Premier League champions losing to the unmasked man's new Italian team in a friendly.
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| When your star striker is as big as the skyscrapers. |
While Guardiola also does not have all of his players back from international duty, he will be bringing the one giant player everyone wants to see in their sky blue kit – the just turned 24 year-old 6'4" (1.94m) Norwegian striker, Erling Haaland, whose list of individual honors is almost as tall as he is. In fact, he wore the captain's armband in their match on Wednesday, when Guardiola's team consisted of:
Starting 11: Ortega Moreno, Lewis, Simpson-Pusey, Mbete, Wilson-Esbrand, Phillips, O'Reilly, McAtee, Bobb, Grealish, and Haaland.
Subs: Ederson, Carson, Perrone, Wrighte, Katongo, Ndala, Galvez, Susoho, Oboavwoduo, Heskey, Doyle, Fatah, Mfuni, Hamilton, Samuel, Knight.
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| Please don't hurt us or embarrass us too badly. |
While it was absolutely endearing to see both sides come together and team up with Puma to provide a training session for the local kids in New Jersey where they got to literally play with Franco Baresi, the winner of the best social media announcement was no one. Manchester City used their Moonchester mascot in a sad imitation Ghostbusters scene, while Milan depicted Milanello as a cringe Godzilla-like threat to the Empire State building. No, I take it back, Milan's was worse.
Speaking of worse, who knew Zlatan Ibrahimović would be the one to ramble in Milan's press conferences? As if we don't miss him enough already as a player. Before departing for the U.S., Fonseca posted to his social media accounts (clearly he has not yet met Milan social media trolls,) that he was satisfied with the first part of the preseason and was ready for the second part in the U.S. He chose 29 players to travel with the team, a mix of first team and younger players. Although players like Pulisic met the team in New York, and Leão, who is still on vacation, will meet the team on Monday.
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| Milan + Man City + Puma = a chance for young kids to play with the legendary Baresi. |
The match itself will be played at Yankee Stadium, a baseball stadium, which is just still so bizarre to me, even though they do this each summer. Cardinale has deep ties with the Yankees, so this match in particular is very important to him. Of lesser importance seems to be our transfer market. With management repeatedly saying there is no rush, fans see that Serie A kicks off three weeks from now, and that the window slams closed two weeks after that. And while fans have been concerned for a while already, the media is beginning to point out management's failure to give Fonseca the players he needs.
The Premier League kicks off the same weekend as Serie A, but I suspect we will see that Man City will be further along in their preparations. They do have a Community Shield match the week before their first league opener, Milan also have a trophy match to play four days before our first league match as well – defending our all-important Trofeo Silvio Berlusconi title. Friendlies are also never anything to judge a team by, they are really glorified training matches. But this one will be painful to lose on such a big stage, against a team that is more well-known due to the better marketing of the Premier League, especially after Cardinale has gone to such lengths to promote it.
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| All new Milan fans are still fans and good for the brand. |
Or maybe Fonseca's one-time magic vs. Guardiola's Manchester City will prevail, who knows? I just already have nightmares of Haaland and friends meeting up with the defense that SK Rapid Wien did not really struggle to penetrate last week. Add to that the jet lag and the fact that our management has not even purchased the players we most desperately need in order to shore up that defense, it is hard to see this one being anything but humiliating for Milan fans. But at least we can finally see a few world class players, and hopefully our players are having fun.
This post inspired by the music of They Might Be Giant's "I'll Sink Manhattan"
Our next match is a Friendly
Reviewed by Elaine
on
12:30 PM
Rating:
