Serie A Briefing: Maldini at No 10, Osimhen’s out in the cold and did Fonseca’s subs snub him? (2024)

Say you can’t sleep, baby, I know.

That’s that me espresso.

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

Anyone else still wired by this weekend’s games in Serie A?

Here’s what gave The Athletic jitters and palpitations before a decaffeinated international break…

Inzaghi deserves more respect

If Simone Inzaghi openly aligned himself to a coaching philosophy or mentioned how the work of Marcelo Bielsa, Francisco Maturana or Valeriy Lobanovskyi influenced him, perhaps he would get more recognition.

For the best part of 18 months, Inter Milan have been playing the kind of fluid, positionless football that idealists have in mind when they think about what the game should look like at its best and most modern. They’re a cut above in Italy and last year’s runners-up AC Milan aren’t the only team on a record losing streak against them. Europa League winners Atalanta suffered their fifth straight defeat to Inter on Friday. It was also their second in a row by a 4-0 scoreline.

Early goals at the beginning of each half killed Atalanta’s usual buzz as did injuries, late departures and arrivals in the transfer window and disappointed remainers. But even so. “We’ve found the speed of their attacking players difficult to handle recently,” Gian Piero Gasperini said.

Marcus Thuram provoked Berat Djimsiti’s own goal and rounded off the scoring with his third and fourth goals in three games. The Frenchman returned early for pre-season after Mehdi Taremi’s injury and has started the campaign on fire. Either side of the braces against Genoa and Atalanta, he won the penalty that put the Lecce game to bed. Only Juventus striker Dusan Vlahovic has been more prolific this calendar year in Serie A.

As Thuram posed for a photo with his man of the match award, his team-mate Nicolo Barella tossed a towel over the Panini-sponsored trinket. “It’s right to laugh and joke after a game that looked easy but it’s always tough against Atalanta,” Barella said. His penchant for Paul Scholes-like volleys had come to the fore again and would ordinarily merit an entry on its own.

But once again it was Inter’s total football that stood out and the mesmerising 18-pass sequences that had right centre-back Benjamin Pavard popping up on the left wing and fellow defender Francesco Acerbi pressing Atalanta’s goalkeeper Marco Carnesecchi like a centre-forward.

If Inzaghi were as expansive in his press conferences as his team is on the pitch, perhaps he would have a much greater profile outside of Italy.

Hernandez and Leao do their own thing after Fonseca snub

When is a punishment not a punishment and a rebellion not a rebellion? Paulo Fonseca left Theo Hernandez and Rafael Leao out of Milan’s starting XI for the biggest game of the season so far, away to Lazio on Saturday.

“We need to be a team,” Fonseca said by way of explanation; something Milan were not in last weekend’s defeat to Parma when his two best players were at fault. Theo, on his first start of the new season, casually watched Dennis Man give promoted Parma the lead at the Stadio Ennio Tardini instead of busting a gasket to get in front of him. Leao disconsolately dropped to his knees and needed picking up by his new team-mate Youssouf Fofana after Matteo Cancellieri’s winner.

“Body language is everything in life,” Pep Guardiola likes to say and Milan’s isn’t good. After conceding twice for the third game in a row, Fonseca, who once accidentally disqualified Roma from the Coppa Italia by making more subs than he was allowed, made a quadruple change. It worked immediately as three of the four players who came on — Hernandez, Tammy Abraham and Leao — combined to score a high-octane equaliser indicative of this team’s potential.

On the one hand, it looked like an inspired substitution. Fonseca got the reaction he wanted from Hernandez and Leao. On the other, the goal it yielded felt like a show of prideful defiance from the slighted.

Seconds after the 2-2, the referee broke up play for a cooling break. While Fonseca used it to pass on some exasperated instructions, Theo and Leao were not in the huddle. They were traipsing over to the opposite side of the pitch where they waited for play to resume. It was interpreted as an act of dissent.

Afterwards, Hernandez clarified: “We’d been on the pitch for two minutes.” In other words, the pair of them did not need a cooling break. But two of the other subs, Yunus Musah and Abraham, did not need one either and yet still hung around to hear what Fonseca had to say. “People talk. They say things that aren’t true,” Hernandez continued. “Rafa and I are always on hand to help the team.”

Pavlović's header, @RafaeLeao7's equaliser: #LazioMilan in 60" ⏱️

Brought to you by @SN4IFUN pic.twitter.com/Zo9SHrJ2tX

— AC Milan (@acmilan) September 1, 2024

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

Milan keep conceding the same goal too, down Emerson Royal’s side. His €15million (£12.6m; 16.6m) signing from Tottenham Hotspur looks like the biggest donation in the history of Fondazione Milan as the club charitably tries to make his wish to become a footballer come true.

Technical issues aside, the optics aren’t good for Fonseca. Another former Roma and Lille coach was rapidly discredited by real or perceived displays of contempt in Serie A this time last year. Rudi Garcia lasted until November at Napoli after Victor Osimhen, Matteo Politano and Khvicha Kvaratskhelia all publicly disdained his in-game decision-making.

Winless in his first three games, two of which came against revelations Parma and Torino, it’s too early to judge Fonseca. But already he has to avoid the Garcia caricatures. The senior players in the dressing room must bring Hernandez and Leao into line. The issue is they arethe senior players.

Conte leaves Osimhen out in the cold at Napoli

Parma have been so good this season they even attempted to win a game without a goalkeeper. It wasn’t coach Fabio Pecchia’s choice. He had already made five substitutions when Zion Suzuki dashed out of his box, too fast and furious, and Tokyo drifted into David Neres with 15 minutes left on the clock. Already booked for time-wasting, the talented Japanese goalkeeper trudged off while his backup, Leandro Chichizola, helped defender Enrico Del Prato velcro on his gloves.

One-nil down at a sold-out Maradona, Napoli coach Antonio Conte took off a full-back for a striker. He could not, however, partner Victor Osimhen with new signing Romelu Lukaku who had already come on. After the game, Conte said none of the ‘bomb squad’ will be reintegrated at Napoli. “No, this is the squad,” he said. A deadline-day move to Chelsea never materialised for Osimhen and Al Ahli signed Ivan Toney instead after holding 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 in this window,” Napoli sporting director Giovanni Manna said. Three months in the cold await him.

So instead of telling the unseen Osimhen to warm up, Conte called upon Giovanni Simeone instead. Simeone won a penalty in stoppage time, which Lukaku stood over only for the video assistant referee to overturn it. Things were getting desperate. It looked like Del Prato, who could barely fill Chichizola’s jersey, might emulate Olivier Giroud, who kept a clean sheet in a briefer cameo in goal for Milan against Genoa last season. But Napoli kept coming.

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

Results-wise, achieving back-to-back wins against a Champions League qualifier, Bologna, and an exuberant and youthful Parma is impressive. But Parma hit the bar before taking the lead, were 1-0 up without a goalkeeper until stoppage time and could have scored an equaliser in the 105th minute.

In mitigation, Conte cited the “absurdity” of playing three gameweeks while the transfer window is still open. UEFA — European football’s governing body that apparently, cares so much about making the game as good as possible — should, in his opinion, after tinkering around and expanding the Champions League format, now devote itself to bringing deadline day forward so players aren’t distracted and teams can be completed in time for their respective curtain raisers in all leagues.

Yes, Conte really couldn’t wait to work with Scott McTominay and Billy Gilmour, who no sooner arrived in Naples than departed for international duty with Scotland.

‘Once he figures that out, he has no limits’

This was intended to be a section on Juventus-Roma. But let’s not dwell on a 0-0. After sacking Paolo Maldini from his executive role last summer, Milan let one of his sons, Daniel, move to Monza permanently this summer. They’re only up the road, run by Milan’s old chief executive Adriano Galliani and coached, this season, by Maldini’s old team-mate Alessandro Nesta.

A No 10 who has scored against his old club, not to mention Inter in other loan spells, Daniel’s old man is glad he isn’t a defender. The Maldinis have done enough chasing attackers for two generations. It’s only fair that this one gets to have a bit more fun further forward.

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

Nevertheless, Nesta couldn’t stop raving 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’s got incredible skills and the intuition you need at the highest level. All he has to do is improve his game management and not drift in and out of the games.

“Once he figures that out, he has no limits.”

(Photos: Getty Images)