Milan battling defensive crisis – Pioli’s solutions for Juventus with objective to tick off

The feeling is that the Stefano Pioli era at AC Milan is drifting towards its conclusion, but there is still the objective of holding onto second place starting with tomorrow’s game against Juventus.

Calciomercato.com writes that having archived the defeat in the derby on Monday evening (the sixth in a row against Inter), which handed the second star Scudetto to their city rivals, Milan must get back on track starting tomorrow in Turin.

The importance of second

In the minds of the owners and management, there is no longer room for the word ‘failure’. Despite the fact his time is drawing to a close, it remains essential for Pioli to achieve the last two objectives in the season: second place in the league and, with it, Supercoppa Italiana qualification.

In addition to sporting merit, they are objectives to be achieved for marketing, brand issues (presence in the tournament in Saudi Arabia) and for economic purposes.

Second place is worth €16.8m with is €2.4m more than third, as well as influencing the market pool – the share of UEFA prizes distributed to each country’s television market – in the Champions League for next year.

Meanwhile, for the Supercoppa (which Milan can gain access to even in third position in Serie A, given Juve have reached the Coppa Italia final), as many as €16m will be distributed to the four participating clubs: semi-finalists will receive €1.6m, with approximately €5m guaranteed to the losing finalist and approximately €8m to the winner.

It can be deduced that these are two goals that must be reached as soon as possible for Milan who, however, will have to face Juventus without three-quarters of their starting defence.

Another emergency

In the tense finale of the derby on Monday evening, the Rossoneri lost three players ahead of the trip to Turin as captain Davide Calabria was sent off and got a two-game ban, as was Theo Hernandez, then Fikayo Tomori reached five yellow cards.