Psv-Milan 3-0 in a friendly match. So it’s a red alert for Salerno

The alarm sounds, and it’s a deafening siren that tears through certainties and questions perspectives. Milan does not fall, but sinks without brakes in Eindhoven (3-0) in the last outing before the resumption of the championship and now at Milanello – after the other knockouts with Arsenal and Liverpool – it is legitimate to worry, also because the Salerno game lacks only three workouts. Three like PSV’s goals in a game without history, which Milan never started playing. Unrecognizable team, a Milan-zombie. Soulless, because attitude is something that has nothing to do with absent (many) and present: there may be more or less quality depending on the performers, but everyone should have that regardless. The image of Maldini in the stands is exhaustive, caught by the cameras shaking his head for a long time. And it had only been a quarter of an hour. If this was – as indeed it was – the good game to give Pioli useful information on Milan in Salerno, it is better to reset everything in the few remaining days of work.

The evidence

—

It must be said that the coach showed up in Eindhoven without eight players: the long-term patients Ibra, Florenzi and Maignan, the subjudice Origi, Krunic and Messias, and the last to return from world vacations Giroud and Hernandez. So Pioli was forced to experiment. What experiments? For example, Mirante on goal. For example Dest left back. For example De Ketelaere favored over Diaz on the frontline and Rebic at the center of the attack, even if in these last two cases it is obviously not a novelty. Instead, the use of Adli wide on the left was, but it was a forcing dictated by center forward Rebic and by Leao – who only returned from vacation on the 26th – initially on the bench. The rest was normality: Bennacer and Tonali in midfield, and above all the return of Calabria after three interminable months, which allowed the central couple Kalulu-Tomori to recompose.

Too easy

—

What turned out to be decidedly out of the ordinary, however, was the approach. Inconceivable and inadmissible attitude, a handful of days from the championship, if it is true that Kalulu gave the ball away as a last man – by wrong control – after 27 seconds (Vertessen pardoned the Devil), Bennacer for half an hour was unable to hit a pass , Calabria was caught in the middle by Til and El Ghazi, Dest was dominated by Madueke, while Saelemaekers (the least worst), De Ketelaere and Adli could not keep and protect a single ball, and Rebic wandered around without assistance. Ah, there’s also some for Mirante, who De Ketelaere saved from the fool by saving an inexplicable punch rebound on the line aimed at his own goal. Fool avoided, okay, but not a good encouragement for those trying to climb hierarchies. Put all these things together and, for the first half hour, the response was sadly one: PSV played, Milan observed. Zero leg, zero malice, zero concentration, zero pressure, zero ideas. A total desert that was even hard to believe. The Dutch goals were therefore a logical consequence. All too easy, of course. The first: Max crossed in total solitude from the AC Milan right flank and Til headed in just as much solitude, between Tonali and Dest who stopped to observe. The second, or Madueke’s big left, was propitiated, in order, by: a mess by Bennacer, a sharp advance on Adli and a wrong reading by Dest. Milan started to come out of lethargy after half an hour. Little stuff, but a signal nonetheless. More pressure, more intensity and a couple of shots from Rebic (the first one close to the post). Signal exhausted when it’s time to take tea.

Disastrous picture

—

In the second half, Lazetic immediately replaced Rebic in the center of the attack (the Serbian has a clear opportunity on his conscience in the quarter of an hour), then at half-time Pioli changed the whole team: ten players in, including Leao and Diaz. All this after the third Dutch goal, which the sumptuous Madueke sent to the Devil in a photocopy: percussion from the right wing in the center, Dest again left in place, Tonali’s doubling was useless, and a winning left foot. Very good 10 English, however. In the last ten minutes, with the match abundantly closed, a couple of rebounds from Leao and a right-footed volley from Vranckx arrived, good only for the record, but useless to soften the disastrous image that Milan has given of itself. After the two knockouts in Dubai with Arsenal and Liverpool, the one in Eindhoven arrives. But now the friendlies are over.