Serie A Briefing: Maldini at No.10, Osimhen left out in the cold and have Fonseca’s substitutions ignored him?

When you say you can’t sleep, honey, I know.

That’s my espresso.

(Editor’s note: James chose to use lyrics from Sabrina Carpenter’s 2024 hit Espresso.)

Anyone else excited about this weekend’s Serie A matches?

This is what gave The Athletics nervousness and palpitations for a caffeine-free international break…

Inzaghi deserves more respect

If Simone Inzaghi were to openly subscribe to a coaching philosophy or mention how the work of Marcelo Bielsa, Francisco Maturana or Valeriy Lobanovskiy has influenced him, he might receive more recognition.

For more than 18 months, Inter have been playing the kind of fluid, positionless football that idealists have in mind when they think about how the game should look at its best and most modern. They are a class above Italy, and last year’s runners-up AC Milan are not the only team on a record losing streak against them. Europa League winners and European Super Cup contenders Atalanta suffered their fifth straight defeat at the hands of Inter on Friday. It was also their second in a row by a score of 4-0.

Early goals at the start of each half have put an end to Atalanta’s usual buzz, as have injuries, late transfer window departures and arrivals and disappointed remainers. But still. “We’ve found the speed of their attacking players difficult to handle recently,” said Gian Piero Gasperini.

Marcus Thuram drew Berat Djimsiti’s own goal to mark the score with his fourth in three games. The Frenchman returned early for pre-season training after Mehdi Taremi’s injury and has started the campaign well, either side of braces against Genoa and Atalanta, and winning the penalty that decided the game against Lecce. Only Juventus striker Dusan Vlahovic has been more productive in Serie A this calendar year.

As Thuram posed for a photo with his man of the match award, team-mate Nicolo Barella threw a towel over the Panini-sponsored trinket. “It’s good to laugh and joke after a game that looked easy, but against Atalanta it’s always difficult,” Barella said. His penchant for Paul Scholes-esque volleys had come to the fore again and would normally be worthy of an entry of his own.

But once again it was Inter’s total football that stood out and a mesmerising series of 18 passes, with right centre-back Benjamin Pavard popping up on the left flank and fellow defender Francesco Acerbi pressing Atalanta goalkeeper Marco Carnesecchi as a striker.

If Inzaghi were as candid during his press conferences as his team are on the pitch, he would probably be much better known outside Italy.

Hernandez and Leao do their own thing after Fonseca rejection

When is a penalty not a penalty and a riot not a riot? Paulo Fonseca left Theo Hernandez and Rafa Leao out of Milan’s starting line-up for the biggest game of the season so far, away at Lazio on Saturday.

“We have to be a team,” Fonseca said by way of clarification; something Milan were not in last weekend’s defeat to Parma, when their two best players failed to deliver. Theo, in his first start of the new season, watched nonchalantly as Dennis Man gave newly promoted Parma the lead at the Tardini rather than breaking a seal to beat him to it. Leao sank to his knees inconsolable and had to be lifted by his new team-mate Youssouf Fofana after Matteo Cancellieri’s winner.

“Body language is everything in life,” Pep Guardiola is fond of saying, and Milan’s is not good. After conceding two goals for the third game in a row, Fonseca, who once inadvertently disqualified Roma from the Coppa Italia by making more substitutions than he was allowed, made a quadruple substitution. It worked immediately, as three of the four players who came on — Theo, Tammy Abraham and Leao — combined in devastating fashion to score an equalizer that is indicative of this team’s potential.

On one hand, it seemed like an inspired substitution. Fonseca got the reaction he wanted from Theo and Leao. On the other hand, the goal it produced felt like an expression of the haughty pride of the belittled.

A few seconds after the 2-2 the referee stopped the game for a break. While Fonseca used it to give some irritated instructions, Theo and Leao were not in the huddle. They walked to the other side of the field to wait for the game to resume. It was interpreted as an act of discord.

After the game, Theo clarified: “We were already on the pitch for two minutes.” In other words, the two didn’t need a cooling-off period. But two of the other substitutes, Yunus Musah and Abraham, didn’t need one either and still stuck around to hear what Fonseca had to say. “People talk. They say things that aren’t true,” Theo continued. “Rafa and I are always there to help the team.”

Pavlović’s header, @RafaeLeao7‘s equalizer: #LazioMilan at 60″ ⏱️

Offered by @SN4IFUN photo.twitter.com/Zo9SHrJ2tX

— AC Milan (@acmilan) September 1, 2024

“Let’s not make a problem out of it, because there is no problem,” protested Fonseca Doth, perhaps a little too much for Massimo Ambrosini, the DAZN pundit and former Champions League winner with Milan. The problems he focused on instead were Milan’s build-up play, giving the ball away on the left half and not playing through or having confidence in midfield, instead the lack of a specific type of filtering midfielder.

(TIZIANA FABI/AFP via Getty Images)

Milan continue to concede the same goal, against Emerson Royal’s side. His €15m signing from Tottenham is believed to be the largest donation in the history of Fondazione Milan, as the club charitably tries to fulfil his dream of becoming a footballer.

Technical issues aside, the optics are not good for Fonseca. Another former Roma and Lille coach was quickly discredited by real or perceived displays of disdain in Serie A this time last year. Rudi Garcia stayed at Napoli until November after Victor Osimhen, Matteo Politano and Khvicha Kvarataskelia all publicly decried his in-match decisions.

Winless in his first three games, two of which were against the revelations Parma and Torino, it is too early to judge Fonseca. But he must already avoid the caricatures of Garcia. The seniors in the dressing room must get Theo and Leao on the same page. The problem is they are the older players.

Conte leaves Osimhen out in the cold at Napoli

Parma have been so good this season that they even tried to win a game without a goalkeeper. That was not the choice of coach Fabio Pecchia. He had already made five substitutions when Zion Suzuki ran too fast and furiously out of his penalty area and Tokyo drifted to David Neres with 15 minutes left. The talented Japanese keeper had already been booked for time-wasting and trudged off while his reserve Leandro Chichizola helped defender Enrico Delprato fasten his gloves.

Trailing 1-0 to a sold-out Maradona, Napoli coach Antonio Conte swapped a full-back for a striker. However, he could not pair Victor Osimhen with new signing Romelu Lukaku who had already come on. After the match, Conte said that none of the ‘bomb squad’ would be reintegrated into Napoli. “No, this is the squad,” he said. A last-day move to Chelsea fell through for Osimhen and Al Ahli signed Ivan Toney instead after parallel talks for both players. “The window is still open (in Saudi Arabia). There are options. But I don’t think Victor will go to Saudi Arabia in this window,” Napoli sporting director Giovanni Manna said. Three months in the cold await him.

So instead of telling the invisible Osimhen to warm up, Conte called on Giovanni Simeone. Cholito was awarded a penalty in injury time, which Lukaku missed, but VAR overturned it. Things were getting more desperate. It looked as if Delprato, barely filling Chichizola’s shirt, might emulate Olivier Giroud, who kept a clean sheet for Milan in a brief cameo in goal against Genoa last season. But Napoli kept coming.

Leonardo Spinazzola, the cheapest signing in a summer in which Napoli spent €138 million net, found Lukaku who turned his man and scored the equaliser on his debut. “I’m used to scoring on my debut,” he said. Then Neres, who was robbed at gunpoint after the match, provided a pass for Andre-Frank Zambo Anguissa’s winner in the 96th minute. The €28 million signing from Benfica has provided assists in back-to-back appearances.

(Francesco Pecoraro/Getty Images)

In terms of results, back-to-back wins against a Champions League qualifier in Bologna and a buoyant and youthful Parma are impressive. But Parma hit the crossbar before taking the lead, led 1-0 without a goalkeeper until injury time and could have equalised in the 105th minute.

In mitigation, Conte called it the “absurdity” of playing three matchweeks while the transfer window is still open. UEFA, which apparently cares so much about making the game as good as it can be, should, in his opinion, after some tinkering and expanding the Champions League format, now focus on bringing the deadline day forward so that players are not distracted and teams can be ready in time for their respective curtain raisers in all competitions.

Yes, Conte really couldn’t wait to work with Scott McTominay and Billy Gilmour, who had barely arrived in Naples when they left for international duty with Scotland.

‘Once he realizes that, he knows no boundaries’

This was meant to be a section on Juventus-Roma. But let’s not get hung up on a 0-0 draw. After sacking Paolo Maldini from his executive role last summer, Milan moved one of his sons, Daniel, to Monza permanently this summer. They’re just down the road, run by Milan’s longtime CEO Adriano Galliani and coached this season by Maldini’s old team-mate Sandro Nesta.

A No.10 who has scored against his old club, and Inter in other loan spells, Daniel’s old man is glad he’s not a defender. The Maldinis have chased enough attackers in two generations. It’s only fair this one gets a bit more fun down the road.

Daniel scored the second-best goal in Serie A this weekend, only surpassed by Barella’s strike at the San Siro. A beautifully struck long-range strike, it gave Monza a 2-0 lead against his old coach, Raffaele Palladino, whose new team Fiorentina dropped out at the start of the season. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to secure their first win of the season, as Moise Kean and Robin Gosens completed a last-gasp effort for the Viola.

(Gabriele Maltinti/Getty Images)

Yet Nesta couldn’t stop waxing lyrical about the 22-year-old Maldini.

“I’ve known him since he was a kid,” Nesta said. “He doesn’t know his own potential. He has incredible skills and the intuition you need at the highest level. All he needs to do is improve his game management and not drift in and out of games.

“Once he realizes that, he knows no boundaries.”

(Photos: Getty Images)