Oh no! Another coaching change?! Are we turning into Roma?!
No, no, we’re definitely not that bad. But as mentioned in the Milan-Roma post match…one in which Roma drew with Milan (ooh, burn?), Milan did indeed move on from Paulo Fonseca. I won’t go into much with him and his tenure here, aside from drawing distinctions and/or parallels, but needless to say I was ready to move on from him probably around early October as I just wasn’t convinced. So with that, let’s move on to the REAL reason for this post…
Welcome to Milan, Sérgio Conceição!
Sérgio Conceição, the Portugal native, comes to us having last coached at FC Porto, reviving the stagnant club into multiple league winners and numerous Champions League appearances. With 11 trophies won during his time at Porto, it’s the second most titles for a coach in their history, trailing only Jorge Jesuś’s 12 trophies. Before coaching, Conceição enjoyed a 18 year playing career, including playing his most formative years in Serie A, playing for Lazio (including their Scudetto season), Parma, and Inter. So the Portuguese native is well-accustomed to Italy and Calcio.
On his tactics, there are some solid videos and posts out there that cover that so no deep-dives here (I’ll provide some links at the end of the post), but a couple of themes have stood out as I’ve read and watched stuff over the last 3-4 days. One is that he isn’t dead set on a formation and the other is that he caters the formation both in cases of who the opponent is and also based on the talent of the squad. While Fonseca did that as well, as evidenced in the wins over Inter and Real Madrid, Fonseca was more focused on playing a particular way, a particular style, than Conceição appears to be. In fact, in his presser from a couple of days ago, he said, “Football is very simple. There’s a goal you need to score in and another you need to keep the ball out of.” I like it.
This doesn’t mean I want to watch Allegri-ball, but I like a coach who is looking to instill principles and values into the team and taking that to whatever the formation and game plan is for that particular game. Within this vein, Conceição talked about the mentality and spirit of the team, that there, “…needs to be intensity, growth, desire, and the hunger to finish matches…”, and “…with everyone in their roles, we’ll collectively be the strongest team.” Essentially a delineation of roles and responsibilities, guided by hard work and determination at all costs.
We can briefly talk about what those roles might be based on what little we’ve been able to witness so far, as there’s been some reporting that Conceição might try a 4-3-3 so he can utilize RLC. While this does give me some worry, he described using RLC as a physical presence in the midfield, not necessarily as a DM-type of player but at least one that isn’t responsible for generating chances. If I do see RLC on the pitch, and to be clear I don’t really want to, that’s THEE role he should be in.
One option we might see especially early on as the wingers recover (Leão, Pulisic, and Chukwueze), and he used it at Porto with some strong strikers (Teremi and Evanilson), is a 4-4-2. I like this option more especially if Leão isn’t playing and I think it’s the ideal time to use it. Morata and Abraham are both good to play off of or as the main target man and if Camarda is paired with one of them, then the other can take care of the second striker role while Camarda focuses more on getting on the end of crosses and layoffs.
For me though, and I’m sure for most of you, is what will this coaching change do for Leão and Theo, with both but especially the latter suffering under Fonseca’s leadership.
The key thing for me is that the attacking gameplan centers around Leão, either as a the point of reference or a decoy. We all know Leão is at his best when tight on the sideline where he can use his pace against 1 on 1 matchups, working with or off of overlaps with Theo. For the decoy part to work, Leão needs to be where he is most dangerous and this again is out wide. I’ve read a few different places that Conceição likes to invert his wingers to allow his fullbacks to get forward, and this could work especially with Theo, but it can’t leave the wingers in the middle of the pitch for sustained periods of time especially Leão as it makes it much easier to defend him (and allows the defense to stay more compact).
The potential switch to a 4-3-3 I talked about earlier, again if Leão is out it’s not a big deal but if this turns into Conceição’s main formation I’m a little concerned. Maybe his version would be different but crowding out Leão (and Theo) on the sideline with another body makes them less effective. Maybe the tradeoffs, like improving the play of players like RLC, make it worth it but I’m highly skeptical. All of this being said, Conceição also utilized a 4-2-3-1 quite a bit as well, especially when Teremi wasn’t available for a 2-striker formation and this formation would still be my preference now.
Regardless, I’m not going to light myself on fire or jump out of a building if Conceição doesn’t go with a 4-2-3-1 out of the gates, as we won’t get a true sense of what he’s going to lean on until at least a month has passed with a full squad, or at least one with key players healthy. But I wanted to share a couple of thoughts nonetheless and I and we can adjust our concerns, critiques, and praises as we see more and get more evidence.
One last thing I wanted to cover before ending was I read that within his first day or two Conceição had engaged in 1 on 1 meetings with all of his players, which I absolutely loved reading about. The reporting was that he wanted to get a sense of each player and share ideas with them, likely getting feedback but also sharing his philosophies and expectations. I wrote this in the last post and I’ll quote the paragraph in full (added emphasis in bold):
“More broadly, and what Fonseca seemed to miss coming into the squad, especially one with a sustained period of recent success, was that getting buy-in from his players meant putting them in positions to succeed by working with and along side them. This doesn’t mean you can’t dole out discipline or that you have to be buddy-buddy, but it should involve some massaging of egos, especially those of your star players, by showing them how you’re going to utilize their skillsets and allow them to shine and contribute. This ties their individual success to the team success and promotes buy-in. You show them that and learning curves shrink when implementing new philosophies and tactics and you win over locker rooms on top of it.”
I don’t know if Fonseca did what Conceição did exactly, and I’m sure he explained his motivations to the group and perhaps individually, but if he didn’t – or tried and it just didn’t take for ____ reasons – we all saw how that backfired on him. Some people on Twitter were saying, after reports that he was jumping on the player’s asses the first few practices, that they were excited by it and that it would bring discipline. It can but I don’t know that it’s necessarily true. I mean, Fonseca tried it his way and it didn’t work so discipline in and of itself isn’t beneficial, it’s only beneficial if positive change comes of it. If Conceição’s 1 on 1 meetings clearly demonstrated a philosophy that will utilize the player’s skillsets, then holding the player accountable with a stick becomes a useful tool because the player understands they both share the same vision and goal. A good coach also knows how to use the carrot in the stick/carrot motivation tactic, something I’m not sure Fonseca did.
Conceição appears to understand all of this and he definitely seems like more the player-manager, like Pioli, and I think the odds of success are better than they were with Fonseca.
Wrap Up
Man, I felt like I could’ve written a lot more but this was already getting long in the tooth. What I want to reiterate though is that I like the move even though I don’t know if it’ll work out. I definitely prefer the demeanor and style Conceição has and if the team responded well to it with Pioli, I’m hoping they will now with him as well.
We’ll get our first chance to see Conceição in action tomorrow in the semifinal of the Supercoppa vs Juventus in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Until then, Forza Milan.
gillis
*Here are some links to some articles and/or videos I found helpful to get a sense of what to expect from Conceição:
Articles
Analysing Sérgio Conceição’s Porto
Videos
Some Pulisic-specific articles:
How Sergio Conceicao’s arrival at AC Milan will impact USMNT stars Christian Pulisic and Yunus Musah
Christian Pulisic: Will AC Milan’s hiring of Sergio Conceicao affect USMNT star?