Fonseca praises ‘courage’ vs. Real Madrid and explains tactical edge: “Scenario that doesn’t exist’ | OneFootball

AC Milan head coach Paulo Fonseca was full of praise for his side after the 3-1 victory against Real Madrid at the Santiago Bernabeu tonight.

Milan pulled off what many would consider to be a shock result at the home of the European champions, scoring three times and running out winners against Real Madrid.

The first goal of the game went to Malick Thiaw as he headed in a Christian Pulisic corner from close range, then Vinicius Junior’s penalty looked to have righted the ship for Los Blancos.

However, Milan came roaring back and took a deserved lead before the break when Alvaro Morata buried a rebound from a saved Rafael Leao shot.

In the second half, Tijjani Reijnders got his third goal of his Champions League campaign as he collected a cut-back from Rafael Leao and finished with a low drive from a few yards out.

Fonseca spoke to Sky immediately after the full-time whistle to try and analyse what was a memorable night not just for Milan as a club but for him as a coach. MilanNews relayed his comments.

Was this a performance full of pride?

“I think we won because the players had the courage to come here and not be afraid of anything, trying to play our game. We prepared the game to have the ball, in the first half we did really important things.

“In the second half we suffered more but together and we totally deserved this victory, not only for the 3 goals but because we played with great great quality.”

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Do you want to change the way people think about Italian football?

“I don’t agree when people talk about Italian football like that, but we too can be a team in Europe with more initiative and control of the game. Today we proved here that an Italian team doesn’t just defend: we know how to play with the ball, we’ve done great things positionally.

“The team knows how to move the ball well with patience. We need to have the patience to grow, we still need to grow a lot.”

It felt like the substitutions caused the team’s level to drop…

“Abraham is a player with other characteristics: Morata connects in the second moment of play, Abraham doesn’t have this characteristic. We lost possession of the ball. They are players with different characteristics.

“Abraham is not a support player and plays further forward, but Alvaro was very tired: a player who works well defensively and helps the team. We were also in a moment of greater pressure from Real, we can’t forget that Madrid changed many results in the final minutes, like Dortmund.

“Maybe in the players’ heads there is also this image of Real and we lost the ability to control the game with the ball, the quality with our exits. But I think that the players who tried to continue with this result.”

Photo by Florencia Tan Jun/Getty Images

Is this a Milan reborn after a bad performance in Monza, given they were compact and creative for 90 minutes unexpectedly?

“This match for a team that wants to control with the ball, is a match in which we have more space: they are not matches like in Italy. You don’t understand outside of Italy how complicated it is in Italy: Monza plays man to man, Cagliari man to man.

“European teams are having difficulty: it’s a scenario that doesn’t exist in other leagues. It’s more difficult than playing in Italy: the matches with Monza and Cagliari are more difficult. It’s difficult to have good matches against teams that play man to man.”