PIOLI: "WE'LL NEED TO BE COMPACT AND DETERMINED"

The third international break of the season is now over and, for the Rossoneri, league action is set to resume at San Siro with AC Milan v Fiorentina. The matchday 13 clash in Serie A is an opportunity to start the final part of 2023 in the best possible fashion. This is what Coach Pioli had to say during his pre-match press conference today:

AC MILAN v FIORENTINA
"Words are meaningless and facts do the talking. We’ve analysed our mistakes and mustn’t repeat them. We have to perform at a high level for 90 minutes. We need to show that we’re a competitive side. Fiorentina have always caused us problems, and we’ll need to be compact, determined and decisive. They play attacking football, get a lot of men forward and are certainly a difficult side to face."

INDIVIDUALS AND RETURNS
"Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to reduce the number of injuries. Every year, we try to assess where and how we can improve in this respect, but each injury needs to be analysed individually in detail. Pulisic, Calabria and Loftus-Cheek will be available tomorrow, but we’ll be without Kjær, Leão and Okafor. Bennacer is doing well. He hasn’t had any setbacks with his recovery and finished his first week of work today. From the third week, he could be back available again. I talk to Jović every day, just like I do to everyone else. He knows what I expect from him and how we play. He’s ready to make a contribution.”

CURRENT FORM
"I have many responsibilities. I remain focused on trying to always do better together with the Club. So far, we haven’t achieved what we should have, but we’ve taken responsibility. The team are working well and are united, but we can do better. We’re only thinking about tomorrow’s game. For four consecutive matches, our second-half performances have cost us. Our concentration levels mustn’t drop, and we need to be consistent throughout the game. We haven’t lost our spirit."

CAMARDA
"I think talent is ageless. Francesco is talented. Sometimes, destiny creates certain opportunities, and both we and him need to remain calm. He’s a very young lad but also very mature character-wise, and he’s ready to give us a hand if needed. Whether he’s used will depend on many factors, but he’s trained well with us in the past few days. I’m sure he has a great future ahead of him."

REMEMBERING DAVIDE ASTORI
"This is Davide’s game: he developed as a player here at AC Milan and then became the Fiorentina captain. There will be an important initiative tomorrow, a fundraiser organised by Fondazione Milan and Associazione Davide Astori so we can do something fantastic together."

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