What’s Up with AC Milan?

The 1-2 lost at home to Roma over the last weekend marked the 4th successive defeat of AC Milan in the Serie A Italian league, although not that that many people these days care too much about that league any longer ever since the blown-up bribery case that has demolited Juventus to the Serie B and severe penalty point punishment to Milan, Lazio, Fiorentina, and Reggina.

It’s rather strange to see how that would happen to Milan who has virtually unchanged team except for the high-profile move of Shevchenko to Chelsea just before the start of the World Cup. They still have Gilardino, who played pretty well last year, and the return of both Pirlo and Gattuso from their glorious World Cup, as well as Real Madrid’s ever wanted man, Kaka. And here’s more discomforting stats, they’ve lost to Atalanta and Palermo, although the latter is now sitting at the summit of Serie A table, even more suprisingly.

In the Champions’ League though Milan is almost sure to go through to the next round, after being admitted to the competittion at the 11th hour –due to UEFA’s inability to find enough evidence and precedence to suspend them from the competition due to the bribery case, and apparently they were pretty lucky to be drawn in a very weak group along AEK Athens, Anderlecht, and Lille after a hard-fought win against Crvena Zvezda in the qualifying stage. Nonetheless, Kaka’s performance has been pretty sparkling in this competition, and with their strong history, the Champions’ League seems to be the only chance for AC Milan to add to their silverware after a disappointing exit from last year’s semifinal to the eventual winner Barcelona –although note that Shevchenko’s goal during the 2nd leg is valid as Puyol just threw himself into the ground. Nonetheless, football is football. Referee is human, and only with video replay can things like this be resolved, although I don’t really understand why FIFA strongly rejects this proposal. Today is the year of 2006, the football field is that huge, and with a referee and two aged linesmen, how would it be possible that football still doesn’t leverage technology?

Back to the original story, with almost a third of the season already gone, and Milan is now at 16th on the league table, it’s probably time for Ancelotti to give more playing time to Yoann Gourcuff, who is dubbed to be the next Zidane after a sparkling performance in the French league for a couple of years. Watching some of his clips, that claim is understandable as his moves, posture, and playing style does show some reminiscent of Zidane, although I don’t think there will be anyone can replace Zidane, just as no one can ever replace Platini. It would be interesting to see how well he’ll grow at Milan, especially with the fact that Serie A these days has been lack of stars compared with the Premiership, an ever decreasing stadium attendance, and with the bribery case has just set the final damage, the Federation probably need to do something to restore their once brilliant league with necessary actions, and so does AC Milan. They need to step out of this zone to get back to their old self, winning.