Milan v Atlético Madrid

An idea I have is that we should just play MDS at CB until we get a good CB and use Urby at LB and Abate at RB.

Forza wrote:An idea I have is that we should just play MDS at CB until we get a good CB and use Urby at LB and Abate at RB.

A reporter suggested this to Seedorf but he said he will only play the players in their natural positions.

•MilanDevil• wrote:

Forza wrote:An idea I have is that we should just play MDS at CB until we get a good CB and use Urby at LB and Abate at RB.

A reporter suggested this to Seedorf but he said he will only play the players in their natural positions.

Well, quite frankly, that rule went out the window when he put Urby at LB.

Atletico are too good for us, better defense, better midfield, better attack not to metion they are consistent performers and work extremely hard on the field.

I'm not convinced of De Sciglio's aerial ability to perform the role of centre half against a team that has proven so effective in capitalising from set pieces, like all Simeone managed sides. Frankly the more thugs we have on the pitch to make Atletico's physicality the better, which is why I expect Rami to be vital.

As Ninja stated they're simply a much better side, however the statement that they are better in attack must be considered in the light of their counter-attacking style. We effectively need to do what they do to Barcelona and others by taking away the space in behind the defence and forcing them to break down our team rather than breaking into space against the backpedaling wonder we call Bonera. Our natural game is admirable and something we must continue to play, however it's also liable to get us murdered in this tie. With Rami so new to the side, Mexes robbed of all form and confidence by his consistent injury issues, Abate's long term layoff and the lack of quality depth we don't have the back line to withstand such an effective counter-attacking machine. Nor at this time do we have the personnel required to stretch Atletico and break down such a well organised machine with any great consistency. Even with El Shaarawy and Honda it would in all likelihood take a piece of magic to score. Without them we're likely to be consigned to the usual script of this season. Dominance on the ball in areas that do not threaten our opponent before we're cut through on the break in the blink of an eye.

Atletico are certainly the favourites to go through, however we need to make them earn it. If we were in better form I would encourage us to at least attempt to stick to our game plan, however given our fortunes this year, I am more inclined to barricade our goal and let Atletico get a taste of their own medicine.

Atletico might be better but we are Milan. We love being the underdogs   

•MilanDevil• wrote:Atletico might be better but we are Milan. We love being the underdogs   

Are we, really? I don't think we are. We are a shadow of what once used to be the Milan you are talking about. And I am not referring to our financial state, or our trophies. But historically, Milan has a tradition associated with it. Players such as Maldini, Pirlo, Seedorf, Gattuso, Nesta etc embodied the Milan spirit when they took the field, and even in their last years, when their bodies gave up, their hearts were still younger then ever and you could see that in the way they played. There's very few players in our squad today that come close to what Milan stands for.

Bottom line, after watching us play today, I am sure that Atletico are going to kill us. We would be lucky to avoid a huge embarrassment.

Forza wrote:

•MilanDevil• wrote:

Forza wrote:An idea I have is that we should just play MDS at CB until we get a good CB and use Urby at LB and Abate at RB.

A reporter suggested this to Seedorf but he said he will only play the players in their natural positions.

Well, quite frankly, that rule went out the window when he put Urby at LB.

Just want to shed some light on this. What you are saying isn't true. Urby used to be LB for Ajax for a long time. He only started to play in a more attacking role in his time under Van Basten. Then again, Marco put him there mostly because he was decent offensively but a liability in defence.

Madvillain wrote:

Forza wrote:

•MilanDevil• wrote:

A reporter suggested this to Seedorf but he said he will only play the players in their natural positions.

Well, quite frankly, that rule went out the window when he put Urby at LB.

Just want to shed some light on this. What you are saying isn't true. Urby used to be LB for Ajax for a long time. He only started to play in a more attacking role in his time under Van Basten. Then again, Marco put him there mostly because he was decent offensively but a liability in defence.

We all know that Urby has had experience at Ajax as a LB, but he's really a converted winger - or at least an attempted conversion. After LB at Ajax he was moved up to LW and then up to LST. To call Urby a 'natural LB' is really a misnomer.

Two losses in a row for Atleti Just the right time for them to go through a bad patch of form

It feels like , as long as we don't lose in San Siro the ticket for the next round will be possible for Milan despite how in form Atletico might be at the time , if we are up to the task of course. The thing is , should we for some very odd and weird reason get past Atletico , which i very seriously doubt we will , what comes next?

Bayern ? Real ? Barcelona again ? Psg ? Chelsea? Dortmund ? We are really under no conditions and circumstances ready to face such challenges this season. Although i badly want Milan to progress , like full 100% , can you imagine a Milan vs Bayern next round?

Penetration is the only word that comes to mind. We should simply prepare our anus for what comes next if we somehow get past Atletico

"Robinho to miss @acmilan 's @ChampionsLeague game vs @Atleti next week with a thigh injury"

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How sad.

I also think De Jong is complete crap, and that he is way too small for his role. He is pretty much like an old retired Gattuso tbh. Had to be said

How sad.

I also think De Jong is complete crap, and that he is way too small for his role. He is pretty much like an old retired Gattuso tbh. Had to be said

Are you serious? De Jong has been great for us, he has probably been our best player this season.

see , that's what i was talking about in the Napoli thread. Our own fans shit on our own players .

I know this season is a rollercoaster for everybody , but fans tend to support their team , thus the players. Not just the emblem , not just the past , not just the best ones. These are important elements that describe a team , but the players are what trully matters, these are the team you support. When i see fans talk about their own players like that , as if they were playing for rivals..

that's what's sad. De Jong like M99 said , has been most probably our best player this season. I don't understand how the notion of complete crap happens , as i do not about said bs for Mexes and Emanuelson , or Bonera who has been fan favourite about such things. The guy all he does is serving Milan as a true proffesional . Rarely gets any recognition for that. Someone get past him or does a blunter and we concede. That's it , crusified. All game he has 1-2 mistakes , but the rest of his game has been good :" had a bad,shit,crap,e.t.c game" , or he's never mentioned at all , or fans say how he didn't flop this once because blah-blah...

Some people seriously need to question what they want from Milan , cause it's getting really annoying to hear such bs from our own fans , on our own players. I personally do not like so much a few of our players , but i won't blame them for whatever is that i don't like on Milan or shit on them each chance i get. Niang is the one i do not like and the dude has problems with the police ffs. What i am supposed to expect or say about him. With that said , i never ditched him so hard , for a while i was even willing to give him once more the benefit of the doubt(before he left Milan) . With the exception of Niang , which i almost always considered an over rated naive and over his head youngster , who most probably will turn out to be a fraud of what he claims he's capable of , i only trully disliked the one player , Mesbah.

I pretty much hated the fact that such a mediocre player was playing for Milan in a strong season for us , but i at least gave him a chance at his beginning. I even praised him when he deserved it. And i've regretted my whole stance against him eventually , cause i came to understand it was not his fault the club trusted him . I actually learned a very valuable lesson from Mesbah and i wanted to share it with you , maybe it could come in handy. In the end he was playing for my team and he wanted to win for Milan almost as much as i want.

Put that in contrast to the hate some of our players get for a good while now. It's one thing to have your issues with some players , that happens in every single team in the world. But to hate and ditch and never recognise anything they do , because the whole team is in shumbles and you think it's them, that's sad , if not anything worse. I used to talk about how Allegri fell victim of our team's quality and almost everybody kept saying it's him and all. Turns out since he left , the trash talk is increasingly focused more on players and to an extent Galliani , all that just because the situation didn't change as the majority expected . Right , the point here isn't who is wrong and who is right about Milan's case. The point is , it's still Milan and this selective negativity simply sucks hard.

I used to say the quality of our players was the problem and not Allegri. But i am pretty sure i never spoke nowhere near like that about these players , in fact in cases like Abbiati i even defend his incompetence sometimes , cause i know that's all he can do anymore . Allegri gtfo and i am fully behind Seedorf now. I still haven't forgotten about Milan's true issues , just because Seedorf became our coach. And i still won't ditch on the players , no matter what's my opinion of them. We can do better of course , but i won't take that fact to hate on the present Milan. Even for Niang , if he somehow proves he will stay away from such bs again and has a good spell in Monpellie , i would accept him as a fan. I dragged this too long , but that's which someone had to say , Eivindo. Maybe i know why you think like that about De Jong , but truth is he's been more than positive so far. I would describe him as a bright example amongst the shitstorm of unfortunate events that's been happening this season. That complete crap was just .. wrong.

Atletico Madrid boss Diego Simeone has warned his players not to underestimate AC Milan striker Mario Balotelli as his side prepare to face the Rossoneri in the Champions League round of 16.

The Italy interantional was pictured crying after being substituted in the 3-1 loss to Napoli last week but the Argentine insists the 23-year-old has the talent to decide a match single-handedly.

"Balotelli is a player who is in a position to win games by himself," he told La Gazzetta dello Sport.

"I don't think he is fragile, he's someone who just shows his feelings to others. For me, Milan are a strong team with a great club behind them who will try to do everything possible against us. We must be careful."

Simeone has led Atleti to a wave of success since taking charge of the club in late 2011 but refused to rule out coaching another of his former sides, Inter, in the future.

"It's true that Inter were good to me and I had a great adventure there," he continued.

"But I'd beat Milan mainly for Atletico. Right now I'm very happy here in Spain. In the future, we'll see if there's a chance I can coach Inter.

"I imagine the fans would appreciate me."

Atletico ain't doing too well now. They lost three matches in a row and conceded 7 goals in those three matches. Their lack of depth as predicted is pulling them down. They got quite the injury list but most of them should be back for our match with them. Courtois is quite weak at long shots, I hope Balotelli brings his free kick form. If Filipe Luis is injured then our chances to win will greatly increase. Insua is horrible Villa is vital for them, Costa and their goalscoring in general really suffers without him. This tie is far from impossible to win. We can beat them on San Siro on our day. The win in the first leg will be vital. If we don't then it's goodbye to CL for at least one and a half year.

We rarely if ever have a game where we were "on our day", and the chance that we are gonna have two of those, which we will need to beat Atletico are abysmal at best.

Dante wrote:see , that's what i was talking about in the Napoli thread. Our own fans shit on our own players .

I know this season is a rollercoaster for everybody , but fans tend to support their team , thus the players. Not just the emblem , not just the past , not just the best ones. These are important elements that describe a team , but the players are what trully matters, these are the team you support. When i see fans talk about their own players like that , as if they were playing for rivals..

that's what's sad. De Jong like M99 said , has been most probably our best player this season. I don't understand how the notion of complete crap happens , as i do not about said bs for Mexes and Emanuelson , or Bonera who has been fan favourite about such things. The guy all he does is serving Milan as a true proffesional . Rarely gets any recognition for that. Someone get past him or does a blunter and we concede. That's it , crusified. All game he has 1-2 mistakes , but the rest of his game has been good :" had a bad,shit,crap,e.t.c game" , or he's never mentioned at all , or fans say how he didn't flop this once because blah-blah...

Some people seriously need to question what they want from Milan , cause it's getting really annoying to hear such bs from our own fans , on our own players. I personally do not like so much a few of our players , but i won't blame them for whatever is that i don't like on Milan or shit on them each chance i get. Niang is the one i do not like and the dude has problems with the police ffs. What i am supposed to expect or say about him. With that said , i never ditched him so hard , for a while i was even willing to give him once more the benefit of the doubt(before he left Milan) . With the exception of Niang , which i almost always considered an over rated naive and over his head youngster , who most probably will turn out to be a fraud of what he claims he's capable of , i only trully disliked the one player , Mesbah.

I pretty much hated the fact that such a mediocre player was playing for Milan in a strong season for us , but i at least gave him a chance at his beginning. I even praised him when he deserved it. And i've regretted my whole stance against him eventually , cause i came to understand it was not his fault the club trusted him . I actually learned a very valuable lesson from Mesbah and i wanted to share it with you , maybe it could come in handy. In the end he was playing for my team and he wanted to win for Milan almost as much as i want.

Put that in contrast to the hate some of our players get for a good while now. It's one thing to have your issues with some players , that happens in every single team in the world. But to hate and ditch and never recognise anything they do , because the whole team is in shumbles and you think it's them, that's sad , if not anything worse. I used to talk about how Allegri fell victim of our team's quality and almost everybody kept saying it's him and all. Turns out since he left , the trash talk is increasingly focused more on players and to an extent Galliani , all that just because the situation didn't change as the majority expected . Right , the point here isn't who is wrong and who is right about Milan's case. The point is , it's still Milan and this selective negativity simply sucks hard.

I used to say the quality of our players was the problem and not Allegri. But i am pretty sure i never spoke nowhere near like that about these players , in fact in cases like Abbiati i even defend his incompetence sometimes , cause i know that's all he can do anymore . Allegri gtfo and i am fully behind Seedorf now. I still haven't forgotten about Milan's true issues , just because Seedorf became our coach. And i still won't ditch on the players , no matter what's my opinion of them. We can do better of course , but i won't take that fact to hate on the present Milan. Even for Niang , if he somehow proves he will stay away from such bs again and has a good spell in Monpellie , i would accept him as a fan. I dragged this too long , but that's which someone had to say , Eivindo. Maybe i know why you think like that about De Jong , but truth is he's been more than positive so far. I would describe him as a bright example amongst the shitstorm of unfortunate events that's been happening this season. That complete crap was just .. wrong.

Criticising De Jong and criticising Mexes are really incomparable to me. The former has arguably been our most reliable performer, whilst the latter has been a defensive liability in my opinion. This is what I mean when I'm talking about justified criticism. I'm not going to go soft on Mexes just because he's a Milan player. At the end of the day, he was the one marking Higgy for Napoli's second and Higgy lost him far too easily when that ball came over the top. The point is that this forms part of the basis for my criticism of Mexes, i.e. I am able to justify my criticism. On the other hand, I am of the opinion that any criticism of De Jong is harsh given that I haven't got any evidence that he is performing badly.

I don't hesitate to make justified criticism of Milan players. It's a slippery slope to becoming one of those plastic fans who thinks all the players on the team are fantastic. You're clearly intelligent enough to grasp the realities of football. It's not enough just to be a professional, you have to perform at an elite level, or at least a good level. Both of us saw the Napoli game and recognise the faults in our team. It's a personal decision whether to write something on the forum criticising our players, but what is most important is that nobody should have to censor themselves when the performance was truly awful. And it was truly awful.

NDJ has been our best player this season. One of the few, who are actually worthy of wearing our jersey TBH.

Forza wrote:
Criticising De Jong and criticising Mexes are really incomparable to me. The former has arguably been our most reliable performer, whilst the latter has been a defensive liability in my opinion. This is what I mean when I'm talking about justified criticism. I'm not going to go soft on Mexes just because he's a Milan player. At the end of the day, he was the one marking Higgy for Napoli's second and Higgy lost him far too easily when that ball came over the top. The point is that this forms part of the basis for my criticism of Mexes, i.e. I am able to justify my criticism. On the other hand, I am of the opinion that any criticism of De Jong is harsh given that  I haven't got any evidence that he is performing badly.

I don't hesitate to make justified criticism of Milan players. It's a slippery slope to becoming one of those plastic fans who thinks all the players on the team are fantastic. You're clearly intelligent enough to grasp the realities of football. It's not enough just to be a professional, you have to perform at an elite level, or at least a good level. Both of us saw the Napoli game and recognise the faults in our team. It's a personal decision whether to write something on the forum criticising our players, but what is most important is that nobody should have to censor themselves when the performance was truly awful. And it was truly awful.

Right , i get it. We both made our points and something final i have to say is , we should always respect the players , even when they do their worst. You agree with that , you don't , i can't do anything about it . That's all i am saying . Aside from that , which is down to you (anyone) , here you properly use critisicm on Mexes and i have no problem with this , i can even agree with this.

In generall lines , not in the slightest i suggest getting soft with your criticism just because they are Milan players , it's just us , as fans , we should be respectfull to our players , no matter how they suck and awful they might be in some games. All i really bother with is , that the respect to players should come before everything. We will obviously criticize their mistakes and all , like everybody does with their team , sometimes with intence pace and dissapointment , but we should not do that with a lack of respect .

Because there's a world of difference between this post on Mexes and about the thing you said about Mexes being amature on the other thread. I could say more , but whatever. I don't feel comfortable discussing this any longer , i feel like i am patronizing(or just about to) and i hate this. I don't , i only wanted to talk about what being a reasonable fan means to me and what the personal relationship between the players and the fans should be in my opinion , regardless of how they please us with what they have done. Bad days should be called bad days by the fans , i am not even in the slightest discussing that , but always with respect . It's still Milan , no matter how they dissapointed .

Kaka will potentially miss this match. IF he does I'd go with Taarabt, Balotelli, and Poli behind Pazzini. F*** Robinho.

Milantildeath wrote:Kaka will potentially miss this match. IF he does I'd go with Taarabt, Balotelli, and Poli behind Pazzini. F*** Robinho.

Agreed. I think Balo is great when he drops deeper too and plays in that SS role. Pazzo takes the CBs out by moving close to goal and opens up the space in between the lines for Balo to be creative.

The tie is coming. Can you feel it? I think we can do it. Forza Milan.

M99 wrote:The tie is coming. Can you feel it? I think we can do it. Forza Milan.

I can feel it.