Week 4 of Serie A sees Rafa’s Partenopei travel to San Siro to tackle us in a game most Milanisti understandably have trepidations about. I’m one of such, of course, because if our tedious style of play, uninspiring manager, and eternal injury list is not enough to put the fear of God in you then I do not know what will.
Milan come into this game on the back of a 2-0 win over Celtic in the CL. Celtic are supposed to have played us off the park for large parts of the game but the end result is that they lost. So while everyone is going off spouting how they deserved more and all that, nobody is going to remember that in a year’s time, only that they lost. I remember several games against provincial sides where Milan huffed and puffed and eventually lost, and I don’t remember anyone saying we deserved more, so this eternal fawning over Celtic really counts for nothing; and whilst I’m certainly concerned about how a technically limited Scottish team played us off the park, I could live without the rest of the world pretending they played like Barcelona and lost, because they didn’t.
A little piece of good news before this game is that Ignazio Abate is one of three players back from injury, alongside M’Baye Niang and Ricardo Saponara. Now whilst I have always had my reservations about Abate, his non-existent crossing skills and the occasional blackout during the most crucial of games; two games with Zaccardo and I was weeping tears of joy at the news he was back training. Our defence is one big mess, and Right-back is the only place we’re reasonably set. So being forced to watch that place be a mess too was disheartening, and I for one am never complaining about Abate during a game again.
After righting the ship with the 4-3-3 last year, the decision to go back to the 4-3-1-2 is baffling, and persisting with it without the trequartisti expressly ordered for the change is baffling, but that is what we have to deal with. And the idea of playing Matri and Balotelli together is another that makes little sense to me. We don’t what our most dangerous player a little further from the goal, moreso when the one left to deal with the centre-backs is a technically limited player who cannot do what Balotelli does when he’s up there. Allegri’s first two seasons were largely dependent on Ibrahimovic, and it worked because he was always in conjunction with a second striker and a midfield he set things up for, a role that should be Balotelli’s now. Playing him as the second striker is a decision I'm struggling to see to which end it serves.
Anyway, the game is against Napoli, who are everyone’s favorite team now. They are top of Serie A, and are just coming off a win against the second best side in Europe last season, and Dortmund do not hold that accolade just because they were in the Cl final. Hamsik is in the form of his life, whilst his supporting cast of Insigne, Pandev, Callejon, and the striker known as ‘Pipita’ are not doing too badly either. They rightly are everyone’s favourites, and Allegri has always, barring his first season, had a problem taking on our direct, top of the table rivals. The forecast is not very good then, one might say, but Napoli has not won at the San Siro in a long while, whilst our other hope is that, well, this is football.
Anyway, it’s not like Milan to throw up our arms in the air and say we cannot do this, and we are going to give it a shot because this Napoli team is far from invincible. Of course, I’m an eternal optimist, and the first 20 minutes of our games are always a great reality check. It’s still far from mission impossible, though if it was Sulley Muntari is a great upgrade from Tom Cruise.
The game kicks off Sunday night at 1845 GMT, and the best advice is to go in there like a robot, inasmuch as that is possible for a Milan game, then you can unshackle all your inhibitions if we somehow win. In this current state though, I’m sure most people would not mind a repeat of the scoreline when both sides met at San Siro earlier this year.
Nii Smiley Byte
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