Allegri: ‘AC Milan must gain self belief, Roma deserved early lead’

Max Allegri admits Roma ‘deserved to take the lead in the first 35 minutes,’ but AC Milan held out and secured the victory. ‘The team has to gain self-belief, it’s a process.’

The Rossoneri were under constant pressure in the opening half-hour, yet managed to take the lead with their first shot on target, when Rafael Leao pulled back from the by-line for the Strahinja Pavlovic tap-in on the counter-attack.

They had chances after the restart, including a Mario Hermoso goal-line clearance on Leao, but Mike Maignan was the hero to save a Paulo Dybala penalty, awarded for Youssouf Fofana’s handling offence.

“The first 35 minutes, Roma absolutely deserved to take the lead, as we were getting everything wrong that it was possible to get wrong,” Allegri confessed to DAZN Italia.

“That was also due to the extreme pressure that Roma were putting on us, we were unable to get out, so we needed to drop Bartesaghi and De Winter deeper to create more room to play in. Once we took the lead, we were set out better in defence too, and could move to a four-man midfield.

“We came out with the right attitude for the second half and had chances to double our advantage, then of course Roma came back at us, but they struggled to create clear-cut scoring opportunities.”

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It is not the first time that the Rossoneri have had a difficult first half, so what can Allegri do to change that in future?

“I think our problems in the past paradoxically have been in the second half, whereas today we were spread out better with the four midfielders, putting pressure on Roma and making the most of the spaces as they opened up,” insisted Allegri.

“This is a process, a team has to gain confidence and self-belief, which is not easy playing at San Siro. We were missing some very experienced players today, including Pulisic, Rabiot and Tomori, so this was an opportunity to test different players in the pressure cooker of this stadium. I have to say they did very well.

“Bartesaghi and De Winter had a bad opening 20 minutes, but improved considerably as it went on, especially Bartesaghi who had 65 great minutes.”

Milan had been forced to make changes, because Santiago Gimenez, Christian Pulisic and Adrien Rabiot missed out, so an all-new strike partnership was created of Leao and Christopher Nkunku.

“Rafa and Chris both had good performances. We have players with these characteristics, so we’ve got to make the most of them. Nkunku might be quite short, but he is good in the air,” explained Allegri.

“I’ve had a lot of teams with a pure centre-forward and many teams without, the important thing is to get bodies into the box. Tonight we did that, Fofana could’ve scored two goals doing that, so we’re creating the opportunities.”

This result means Milan catch Roma on 21 points, the same as Inter, in joint second place just one point behind sole leaders Napoli.

It was a very emotional evening for Allegri, as just hours before kick-off news broke that his mentor and friend Giovanni Galeone had died at the age of 84.

“It is a sad day for me, we lost the Mister I was so fond of after 35 years of friendship. I joined Pescara in 1991, they had signed Massara and put me in the package. After half an hour of training, he said if you want to play football, you can’t be a trequartista, you’ve got to be a mezz’ala. That is where my modest playing career really began.

“He taught me so much, and despite the fact he was known as a great attacking coach, I learned all my defensive tactical concepts from him too,” concluded Allegri.