Leao has made peace with everyone in Milan: but the case remains

The “small” case has been resolved, but the overall one apparently remains. Leao’s week for the Rossoneri ended with confident smiles after Rabiot’s goal at Toro and little hearts sent via social media to Fofana, who celebrated the goal by dedicating a celebration to him on board the surf. Postcards from the Cuore book obviously facilitated by the three points taken against the Granata, which ended the controversy following the defeat against Lazio. Rafa, however, remains restless. And it’s not a question of the locker room, but of physical uncertainty. Which in addition to the legs, undermines the mood and feeds worms in the head. Also because it’s not just a question of Milan: there is also a World Cup coming up and Leao is forced to miss the last round with the national team.

sneaky trouble

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The logistics remain to be understood – will he still leave for the Portuguese training camp, where he will be visited, or will coach Martinez be satisfied with the medical certificate from Milanello? -, but it’s a detail: the gist is that Rafa can’t fix that stinging adductor once and for all. There are no injuries and paradoxically it is even worse because the problem is even more subtle. It must be treated with great caution because the inflammation could worsen and become chronic. So yes, the World Cup – in addition to the last part of the championship – could become at risk. Allegri said yesterday that “we preferred to stay still so as to have 20 days to recover. The national team? He is absolutely not able to play, he needs to do specific work to get back to one hundred percent”. In short, the situation is delicate, also because the weeks pass by and the coach himself had recently said that Rafa was better. It’s not a matter of minimizing the situation, as we sometimes choose to do so as not to create excessive alarmism: the problem is that the groin pain returns without warning, after you have deluded yourself that it has gone away.

contribution

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To tell the truth, when the news of Rafa’s knockout spread the day before, someone even thought of the most evil scenario: do you want to see that he called in sick when perhaps he discovered that he wouldn’t start with Toro? With a limping season – in practical and conceptual terms – and a World Cup just around the corner, it would obviously be a sensational own goal. Leao is often moody, but he cares a lot about Milan. And if the “case” remains, it is not so much for behavioral reasons – getting angry at a substitution can happen to anyone, even getting angry with a teammate – but rather for how his career is evolving. For his contribution on the field, for the complexity of his migration from external attacker to central striker (at the moment there are no hypotheses of changes to the formation in view of next season). A number helps to understand: in the last five games played without him, Milan have scored 14 goals. It’s as if the team was freer in the offensive phase, less constrained by its movements. It’s as if it were more of a single body. Just as it is reasonable to say that Milan defend better in his absence, because the Portuguese is not able – by his nature – to guarantee coverage work with continuity as, for example, Pulisic does. All reflections which in any case do not have the power to lead to an exact and non-questionable answer. Leao is also the player who, as Allegri rightly points out, made himself available despite obvious physical suffering, and who in the first part of the season showed his best scoring average ever for the Rossoneri. All that remains – so to speak – is the basic question: is Rafa a “case” worth continuing to try to solve?