Zlatan Ibrahimovic (Ansa) Milan, 30 March 2023 – At Milanello, the maneuvers to approach the big match on Sunday evening at the Maradona are continuing, with the return of the national teams from their respective selections after the parenthesis for Euro 2024: for Pioli, however, there is some bad news under Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s terms. The Swedish forward, who had returned from commitments with his national team with a muscle problem, will instead be forced to stop for about two weeks: the checks he underwent, in fact, highlighted a muscle problem in his right thigh due to which will be evaluated week by week. Ibra will therefore miss Sunday evening’s match against Napoli, where the weight of the attack will be carried, as always, by Olivier Giroud. In addition to Ibra, the Emilian coach will also have to do without Pierre Kalulu and Junior Messias: the tests carried out on Monday by the French defender showed a lesion of the soleus muscle of his right calf and a new instrument check will be carried out in a week; out, therefore, certainly for Naples and Empoli and most likely also for the first leg of the Champions League against the Neapolitans. With the absence of the number 20, the role of right-back will almost certainly be filled by Davide Calabria with the recovered Florenzi as his first alternative, while the three remaining centre-backs (Tomori, Thiaw and Kjaer) will fight for the two available places with the Englishman favorite to be joined by either of the other two. Calabria hasn’t played a match since the first minute of the championship derby on 5 February and since that day the Milan full-back has seen very little of the field (he also had a physical problem that kept him out for some time) and remained on the bench for 90′ also in the two great Champions League matches against Tottenham. As for Messias, he is aiming for a fairly quick recovery. The Brazilian, absent from the second half against Tottenham in the second leg, hopes to return for the first leg match against Napoli in the Champions League but in this case too the assessments will be made day by day. “Napoli are very strong, in the summer it was difficult to predict they could play football like this but no team is unbeatable. To ensure that this is a positive season we have to play in the Champions League again next year and for this we have to be careful in the league”, the words of Stefano Pioli in view of the decisive match on 2 April, which opens a month of fire for the Rossoneri, returning from a single point collected in the last three days and a heavy crisis experienced in January. To face the Neapolitan battleship, the coach could not only change his tactical form, returning to the back four: with the 3-4-2-1, things have clearly improved from a defensive point of view, after the black January experienced by the Devil, but the price was undoubtedly the offensive danger, with Milan too little prolific in front of goal. For this Pioli aims to return to the old ways: in today’s tests, the first of the week in view of the match at Napoli, the Rossoneri coach tried Kjaer in the center and not Thiaw alongside Tomori, while on the wings there was space for Calabria to the right and to Theo Hernandez to the left. Against Napoli, the 4-2-3-1 should therefore be reviewed with Bennacer and Tonali in the middle of the field: forward behind Giroud, Leao is sure of a place on the left, while as an attacking midfielder Diaz is slightly favored over Krunic . Finally, on the right should be Saelemaekers.
Grandparents celebrated their day in Punta de Mata
June 2, 2023
