AC Milan Cannot Get Back Riccardo Montolivo Any Sooner

An injury robbed Riccardo Montolivo of a chance to play in Brazil. He fractured his tibia during a pre-World Cup friendly with Ireland in May, but it wasn't Italy who suffered the most through his absence.

It was AC Milan.

The team lost its captain and its biggest creative force in the middle of the park. Milan had time to find a temporary replacement, and they brought in Marco van Ginkel on loan from Chelsea. But he has only played once, and coach Pippo Inzaghi decided to field a trio of bruisers in midfield on most occasions early in the season. 

Milan’s strikers have suffered. Only one of Milan's 18 goals in Serie A has come from a striker, and it was scored by Fernando Torres. 

Milan sold a drifter like Mario Balotelli and bought a player in the mould of a true striker, but the team does not have the players to serve such a striker. Torres and Giampaolo Pazzini, who has not even started a match, look stranded up high on the pitch. 

Tired of standing and waiting for a ball that would never come, Torres would run back and try to get in the play himself. Balotelli would do that all the time, and it is something Silvio Berlusconi does not like. 

"To shoot on goal, you need to stay close to the box," Berlusconi told Corriere dello Sport (h/t 101 Great Goals). "Against Cagliari, we didn’t take a single shot inside the box. So I advise the attackers: don’t do like Balotelli. In order to shoot and score, stay close to the goal.”

Nigel de Jong has tried to initiate the play—and he’s scored some goals himself—but he is overrun in midfield. He already has six yellow cards, more than any other player in the league, and that’s probably because Milan are losing the battle in midfield. 

Sulley Muntari does not help. Muntari loses the ball way too often, and he has no intention of creating plays, just smashing the ball.

Montolivo is not so much quicker than De Jong, and he doesn’t score many more goals than Muntari, but he is a missing link. Montolivo can share the ball-carrying duties with De Jong, who already makes 80-90 touches a match, and Montolivo can move the ball forward.

The 29-year-old may not be the most exciting captain, and sometimes he looks unsure with the ball, but there is no doubt that Milan miss him.

He is back training with the team after five months.

“I couldn’t stand to watch them from the sidelines much more!” he wrote on Twitter (h/t Forza Italian Football).

Montolivo sees the problems, and he knows he can fix them.