Results, attack, defence and build-up: Comparing Milan under Fonseca to Pioli’s last season | OneFootball

The old saying ‘be careful what you wish for’ was uttered by some after Stefano Pioli was given the boot at the end of last season, and they might just be repeating it now.

Milan’s difficult start to the 2024-25 season has drawn comparisons with the start to Marco Giampaolo’s tenure five years ago, one which didn’t last very long and saw Pioli come in to try and fix what was broken.

An almost half-decade journey then followed under Pioli, delivering a Scudetto and a Champions League semi-final, but when he left at the end of last season the overwhelming consensus was that his time had come.

Are the Rossoneri better off? Our colleagues at SempreMilan.it compared the first 12 games of last season with Fonseca’s start so far.

The results

The first item to analyse is obviously the one related to the points obtained: 23 for Pioli (including two in the Champions League), 17 for Fonseca (including three in the Champions League).

To further undermine the position of the Portuguese coach is the fact that Milan did not fail to obtain 20 points from this many games in the league during any full season under the previous coach (2020-21 onwards).

In the first 12 games of last season with Pioli on the bench, Milan conceded 12 goals and lost three games, while under Fonseca they have conceded 16 goals and lost five match.

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The three games lost by the Parma-born manager were all against high-profile opponents such as Juventus, PSG and Inter. Eight of the 12 goals conceded were in two of those games (the embarrassing 5-1 against Inter and three against PSG).

Fonseca’s defeats have almost all come against teams that are on paper a mix, such as Parma and Fiorentina but also Liverpool, Bayer Leverkusen and Napoli.

It is above all the distribution of goals conceded by Fonseca that is worrying: there are six matches in which the Rossoneri have conceded at least two goals, exactly 50% of the games played.

The attack

In terms of goals scored, Fonseca’s side have scored 20 in the first 12 games of the season, which four more than Pioli last year. Scoring goals has not been a problem, and they have only failed to score in two games thus far.

However, under Pioli, there were 152 shots (12 per game) of which 50 were on target (an average of 4.1 per game), a figure that shows his team were not very precise in front of goal.

One thing worth mentioning is that under Fonseca Milan have been able to count upon 11 different scorers so far this season: Okafor, Abraham, Gabbia, Chukwueze, Pavlovic, Leao, Reijnders, Fofana, Morata, Theo and Pulisic.

With the Portuguese in the first 12 games, Milan have had an average of 14.5 shots per game (174), of which only 5.6 per match were on target. With the new coach, the Diavolo shoot more but hit the target at the same rate as last season with Pioli.

The build-up

Moving on to the build-up phase of the game, the number of Live-ball Passes (a pass with the ball in play that led to a shot) rewards Fonseca with an average of 18.3 (220 total) while Pioli stands at 16.8 per game (202).

However, looking at the same data but relating to the passes that led to a goal, things change: Fonseca’s Milan in this area have an average of 1.6 per game, while Pioli in the same number of games last season built 1.8 goals from passing actions.

Given the emphasis that the former Lille and Roma coach placed on possession-based domination and radically changing the style of football, the only statistic that truly speaks in his favour is the goals scored.

Where Milan have improved under Fonseca is, perhaps surprisingly, in the number of goals scored from set pieces: last year under Pioli there was only one goal from a dead-ball situation in 12 games, while with Fonseca the figure rises to four.