The path is the right one, Amorim’s Milan is beginning to take shape and even looks attractive, but it is too early to say mission accomplished. At least as long as the closing stages remain an ordeal like yesterday: Atalanta had been buried under the weight of Milan’s play and goals, a rout seemed inevitable, then Sarri’s incomprehensibly late substitutions and the Rossoneri’s sudden immobility changed a match that had seemed over by technical knockout even before the scoreline made it so.
The Rossoneri are more to blame: there is no explaining the tactical, physical and psychological reversal compared with the exhilarating “movement-based football” seen against Salzburg and for an hour yesterday. As if two matches had been played. The first ended 3-0, the second 2-0 for Atalanta, driven by the newly introduced Gaetano and Zalewski: without Krstovic’s shot against the post, the story would now be different. A second consecutive victory, a place in the sun in the Champions League places and another monstrous performance from Rabiot make everything else fade into the background, but Amorim knows that something is still missing from his project. While Sarri is missing a lot, perhaps too much, writes La Gazzetta dello Sport.
AC Milan's beauty, but then...
It would not be right to conceal all the beauty of the first act, but the suspicion is that Amorim’s total football consumes more energy than Milan can afford. New strategies will have to be studied to last 90 minutes. The closing stages in Salzburg had also been somewhat economical, the Austrians had taken control, but it seemed like understandable game management from the Rossoneri. Nevertheless, there remains a shape-shifting Milan that has finally found an identity, with moments of attacking football, positional exchanges and thrilling forward-moving moves.
Amorim changes seven players compared with the Europa League, the omission of Cisse causes a little stir, but the result does not change. Milan are difficult to decipher: the foundation is a 4-3-3, with Gila perfectly suited to turning the defensive line on the right into a “three-and-a-half” back line, Musah and Modric alternate as playmakers, Rabiot surges forward from his box-to-box midfield role with his extraordinary power, and a three-man attack features Ramos between Chukwueze and Pulisic. Once again, the complexity is only apparent: there are two wingers, two central midfielders, one full-back positioned higher up, but in today’s football, dissected down to the smallest detail, one can also identify a 3-1-4-2 that crushes an already dispirited Atalanta.
A passive Atalanta
Atalanta If Milan are alive and Amorim probably spends his nights at the tactics board, Atalanta seem motionless, like Sarri, who merely moves the pieces around as though playing Subbuteo. After three defeats with the 4-3-3, the successful switch to a 4-2-3-1 against Venezia and Pafos seemed to be the turning point. But it was still Pafos, Cyprus, after all. And then tactics only matter up to a certain point. Atalanta had the wrong players in the wrong roles, with Bernasconi, Pasalic as a holding midfielder, Rowe on the left wing, CDK as an attacking midfielder and Samardzic on the right, each worse than the other.
Krstovic’s lone guerrilla warfare against the Rossoneri troops was not enough: CDK was lifeless. Samardzic was ineffectual, Pasalic was overrun by Rabiot. On top of that, Moreira was wreaking havoc on the left and Modric was painting masterpieces. It is true that Sarri has the excuse of eight absentees, and that Kolasinac immediately becomes the ninth, but something is wrong at Atalanta.
AC Milan vs Atalanta 3-2 - VAR gives and takes away:
VAR was decisive because Chiffi did not show perfect eyesight when judging incidents in the penalty area. Pulisic scores to make it 1-0, but he is in an offside position. Obric, who has just come on, “saves” Musah’s powerful shot with his hand, and Gonçalo Ramos makes it 1-0 from the penalty spot. From an imaginative through ball by Moreira, Rabiot arrives with all his power to slot home the 2-0. At the beginning of the second half, VAR spots another handball, by Kristensen, on Rabiot’s shot and awards a penalty, which Ramos has saved by Carnesecchi: but from the resulting corner, the French midfielder conjures up a headed assist for Gila. Match over?
Late awakening
Hindsight is the easiest of Olympic disciplines, but waiting until 0-3 to intervene cries out for criticism. Sarri brings on Zalewski and Gaetano for Pasalic and Rowe and, would you believe it, the Pole immediately spots the midfielder’s run into the penalty area and delivers the ball to him with millimetric precision: 3-1. Except that more than a quarter of an hour passes before Scamacca comes on and the formation changes to a 4-2-4 with two centre-forwards.
That it was too late is demonstrated by Krstovic’s goal to make it 3-2, Zappacosta’s two chances, on the first of which Maignan produces something close to a miracle, and the complete reversal of the match: Atalanta in control, aggressive, constantly attacking, with Bellanova turning on the turbo down the right, and Milan weakened by the substitutions (Hutchinson, Estupiñan, Loftus-Cheek, Jashari) and also by Amorim’s decision to retreat into a 5-4-1, hardly an encouraging message.
The possibility of 3-3 hangs over the match until the end of stoppage time. Now comes Bournemouth, an English examination for Amorim’s imaginative ideas, before Udinese, who are in such a crisis that they might even replace Runjaic, and who knows. A decisive week, just like the one awaiting Atalanta, who, between Ajax and Frosinone, will have to be different. And immediately.
