Milan-Udinese Preview: Redemption or Relapse

Like picking up a cliffhanger of a book where you were forced to leave off, our Fonseca season picks back up again when Milan host Udinese at the San Siro. Amidst poor results, defiant players, a manager's tantrum, injuries, and even a player suspended, Fonseca needs to pull this team together to try to pull points off of a team who is actually two points ahead of us on the table. He's basically got two choices: redemption or relapse.

Fonseca will need a lot more from his team for redemption.

Of the many teams who hired new managers this season, only two opted for foreign managers: Milan and Udinese. While Fonseca is largely disappointing for a club like Milan, German manager Kosta Runjaić has impressed at a club like Udinese, who finished 15th last season. His record in Serie A is four wins, one draw, and two losses, with those losses being to Roma and Inter. He also led them to two strong wins in the Coppa Italia, so of nine matches played, Runjaić has won six. What must that be like?

Management wanted a foreign manager, they just hired the wrong one.

Udinese's most recent match was a 1-0 win over Lecce ahead of the break. For that match, Runjaić lined up: Okoye; Kabasele, Bijol, Touré; Ehizibue, Zarraga, Karlström, Ekkelenkamp, Zemura; Lucca, and Brenner. He will be missing both Thomas Kristensen and Alexis Sanchez to injury for our match.

Fonseca will be missing Forenzi, Bennacer, and Calabria to injury, but Sportiello will finally return to the bench after his bizarre mishap with a chandelier in the U.S. this summer. However, Theo Hernández will also be missing, serving the first match of his two match suspension after being sent off after the Fiorentina match. Fonseca is still very, very angry about that match, nearly two weeks later.

Sportiello will finally make his much awaited comeback.

During his prematch press conference, he discussed the hierarchy of the captain's armband, contradicting himself by saying that it doesn't matter who wears the armband, that the team simply needed leaders, but having already said there would be about five players who would share the armband. So for example, it sounds like Theo, who has been Vice Captain, will no longer wear the armband. Which is perfect, given that the club is already way behind schedule to offer him a renewal. 

Theo makes dumb mistakes, sure, but he is a leader. His suspension was because he was angry at the end of one match, but Fonseca has stayed angry for two weeks. He said he has not ruled out "punishment" for the players who blatantly disobeyed him regarding the penalties in that match, and it sounds like benching them for the Udinese match is at least part of that punishment. However, he claimed that benching Theo and Leão for the Lazio match, which cost us two points, was not a punishment, and created more controversy.

Tomori is another player who could possibly (probably) be dropped for this one.

Basically, Fonseca is like an angry stepfather. He has never convinced these players. He has imposed his ideas on this team, rather than try to find something that suits these players, and his ideas have not worked, they have not gotten the results, and his lineups have actually cost the team points. Now the players are openly defying him, so he is getting more and more angry. and if expected lineups are true, we can absolutely expect to drop more points on Saturday evening. 

Fonseca is reportedly replacing Theo with Terracciano, who is the antithesis of Theo and has been in cold storage for months, and benching Tomori for Pavlović, who needs time, but is coming off of a red card with Serbia on Tuesday. Tammy Abraham, another "defiant one," is also reportedly being benched, and for some reason, Leão is being benched, despite coming off of one of his best national team breaks ever. If he only has three wins in all, two of them against relegation zone teams, with his best eleven, how are we expected to get a result on Saturday against a much stronger team that is in form?

Does Fonseca actually have Ibrahimović's full support?

This match was an opportunity for Fonseca to seek redemption, but his extended anger and all of his comments point to another poor result in the making. People in the Italian media claim he has the club's full trust, yet Ibrahimović was not at Milanello at all this week. Aftter everything that happened, this would have been a great week for him to be around to have Fonseca's back. Maybe they really do trust the manager implicitly, or maybe they are just leaving him completely to his own devices. Maybe they are putting him in the deep end, to see if he will sink or swim. If he swims, it will bring him redemption, but if the team doesn't get a result, the relapse could put his job in serious jeopardy again.

This post inspired by the music of Bambie Thug's "Doomsday Blue"

Campionato Primavera 1 Week 8

Milan Primavera vs. Cremonese Primavera

Saturday, October 19, 2024 • 15:00 CEST (9am EDT)

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Serie A Week 8

Milan vs. Udinese

Saturday, October 19, 2024 • 18:00 CEST (12noon EDT)

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Our next matches are:

Serie C Week 10

Milan Futuro vs. Legnago Salus

Sunday, October 20, 2024 • 17:30 CEST (11:30am EDT)

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