A nightmare start, with the first rumours of a farewell that was, to say the least, premature: mister Paulo Fonseca is already having to manage a complicated period in his new adventure as Milan coach. The Portuguese coach spoke at a press conference this Friday, taking stock of his Milan and also touching on the case involving Leao and Theo Hernandez before the break. Below are his main statements, collected by TMW on the eve of the match with newly promoted Venezia.
On the triptych of matches against Venice, Liverpool and Inter: “They are all important, even more so at this moment. I am confident, as always. It is important to win tomorrow, then we will think about Liverpool”.
On the Theo and Leao case: “Never open for me. I don’t know if they will be starters, we’ll see tomorrow. I saw two players like the others, with a good aura, cheerfulness in working, normal”.
If you already feel under scrutiny: “We coaches are always like that, we depend on the results. But I’m just focused on my job. If we focus on what is said, it’s difficult to work. All of us.”
On the comparison with society: “We are in touch every day: on the phone, here or at a dinner… We are always in touch.”
On the too many goals conceded: “We didn’t have many players during the break, but we had many defenders. We worked on the behavior of the defensive line and on individual behavior.”
On the Scudetto objective: “The goal of winning the Scudetto remains. We are not a sad team or without confidence… What I see every day is a team that believes in itself, that wants to improve, happy… That’s why I’m always confident. I can’t be here in any other way when I see the players like this. Then, there are the results. But I can’t be negative looking at the form and confidence of my players”.
On the new young purchase Vos: “He trained with us this week, I had already seen him before and he confirmed that he is a quality player, who wants to have the ball, to have a great participation in offensive possession, like almost all Dutch players. Technically he is strong, he can play both as a midfielder and as an attacking midfielder. I really enjoyed this week with the First Team. He and Zeroli will always work with the First Team. He confirmed what we saw”.
Read all of Fonseca’s words here!