Analysis of Leao’s Contribution and Milan’s Offensive Problems

The debate is open and Arrigo Sacchi has contributed to fueling it, with a severe and merciless analysis towards the problems revealed by Milan in their game proposal: “Leao scored a good goal (against Verona, ed.), but today Milan exists above all for the Portuguese and this is a limit. Leao, with his way of being on the pitch, with his missed returns, with his lack of participation in the group’s work, is what doesn’t allow you to become a collective”. A judgment destined to create new controversies regarding the performance of the Portuguese striker at the start of the season, awarded an even more evident centrality with the assignment of the legendary number 10 shirt and a new contract worth 7 million euros per season. A judgment which, however, probably does not take into account a series of statistics that seem to say otherwise: the problem, if anything, is that of a Milan that is not fully exploiting the potential of its highest quality player and that in general he is not producing an offensive phase that is up to the task. Regardless of the fact that new players have arrived and in particular two – Reijnders and Pulisic – highly requested by their teammates.

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HE IS LESS INVOLVED – Let’s look at last three seasons: the 2021/2022, that of the last Rossoneri scudetto (for which Leao’s contribution was enormous, especially in the final sprint), the last one and the one that has just started. In which the class of ’99 has already equaled the start of the previous championship in terms of scoring – 3 goals in the first 5 games – but reserving different numbers from the point of view of involvement on the part of his teammates: for example, citing the data provided by Kickest, the attempted shots were 9 (one every 45 minutes approximately), compared to 92 last year (one every 26.4 minutes) and 97 the year before (one every 27′). Even in terms of dribbling, a valuable piece of Leao’s collection, the dish is weak compared to the last two championships examined: to date, the Rossoneri number 10 has attempted 24 – one every 16.79 minutes – against 149 in the 2022/23 season (one every 16.3 minutes) and 163 in 2021/22 (one every 16 minutes). And let’s end with this steps takenwith an average remaining substantially unchanged, went from one every 3.07 minutes of the Italian run to that of one every 3.66 of the first 5 matches of the current championship. It should also be highlighted that, after the first three matches, the figures relating to the Portuguese’s involvement in the attacking phase were improving compared to last year, with 45 balls touched per match (against 38) and 2.3 chances per match against a average of 1.4. Before the collapse in the last two matches, in which the involution of Pioli’s game appeared clear compared to the results against Bologna, Turin and Rome.

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THE REAL PROBLEM – Sacchi complains about Leao’s poor participation in the non-possession phase and the data seems to prove him right on this: in 2021/2022 he had added a total of 31 stolen and intercepted balls (one every 84′), passing through the improvement of the last year – one every 65.6′ – and coming to the current statistics, with just 3 steals. THE numbers are numbers, but it is not certain that they accurately describe the real problem and above all the characteristics of the player: asking the Portuguese to sacrifice himself further and then be decisive in the opposite half of the field is a stretch and does not address the main difficulty of a team capable of scoring twice in the last 270 minutes between the championship and the Champions League. A team that in the most complicated match of this start, the derby clearly lost against Inter, allowed Leao to touch half of captain Calabria’s balls. There is undoubtedly work to be done on this so that here too the 3 consecutive goals in Serie A, the same as in the last championship, one more than the championship one, are not misleading.

2023-09-24 21:10:00
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