There is a very important sentence that may have gone unnoticed last night, spoken by Massimiliano Allegri in the press conference: "It was a chaotic evening, we must not play chaotic games." What used to be one of Milan’s defining traits after the Scudetto, chaos, has turned into a problem to fight against in just a few months. Order has been restored, but not completely.
Cremonese and Pisa: lack of control
The two matches unfolded in completely different ways, not only because of the results but also in terms of how they developed. Still, what links them is what we described above with the word “chaos”, which from now on we will call “disorder”.
Both against Cremonese and Pisa, Milan showed a lack of control over itself. It would be wrong to say they lacked control of the match, because the first half last night told a different story. The problem lies more in the game structure. In the first 45 minutes, and again toward the end, Milan looked stretched, frantic, and ineffective. Against Cremonese, we saw the usual pattern: a strong start, a drop midway through the first half as the opponent grew, a goal conceded, a nervous reaction, a stall, then a goal conceded out of nowhere.
Milan's match versus Cremonese and the one versus Pisa are completely different matches
It’s important to put them in context. The first came early in the season, with the team still recovering from a disastrous year. The second came after a strong run of results and renewed confidence.
The most obvious difference is the result, which may also reflect growth over the past two months. In August, it ended in defeat. In October, in a draw. Yet the progress of the two matches was opposite, as relayed via Milan Press.
Against Cremonese, Milan failed to take an early lead despite several chances. Against Pisa, they did. The original sin last night was, paradoxically, too much order, meaning too much caution, during the first fifteen minutes of the second half. The original sin in mid-August was instead disorder and defensive lapses, both individual and collective.
The only real link between the two performances is this recurring sense of losing control of themselves. After Pisa’s equaliser, Allegri urged calm to manage the many minutes still remaining. One image caught on camera shows the coach calling Modric over and gesturing clearly for him to stay composed and manage the phase.
This, too, is chaos, born in the players’ minds, and it must be eradicated. Remnants, for some, of a recent past that seemed over but reappeared for one night. The less it happens, the higher this Milan can climb. How high? Too early to say, but 56 points remain to reach the target.
