ITALY – SEPTEMBER 16: AC Milan head coach Ruben Amorim watches the 2026/27 UEFA Europa League stage MD1 match between AC Milan and SL Benfica at the San Siro Stadium on September 16, 2026 in Italy. (Photo by Marco Luzani/Getty Images)
Ruben Amorim admits Milan may be suffering from a mental disorder after their 2-0 Europa League loss to Benfica, explaining some of his controversial choices and being willing to “adapt” his tactics.
The coach said before kick-off that if he was going to fail, he wanted to “fail big” and suggested he was well aware he might not have the time to fully realize his vision at the San Siro.
This seemed prescient as he suffered his first career defeat after back-to-back draws against Juventus and Lazio in Serie A and a 2-0 loss at home to Benfica in the Europa League opener.
Dodi Lukbakio and Jakub Kaminski scored as Milan again failed to score in the first half and Amorim’s substitution failed to turn the tables this time.
Amorim keeps seeing Milan’s problems
“My idea for this conversation is to play football,” Amorim told Sky Sport Italia.
“To do that we need to have the ball, but when we have the ball we create more problems for ourselves than when our opponents have the ball. We are trying to create routines to gain more possession in the penalty area. We had some possession in the second half but we didn’t create chances and we lacked creativity around the penalty area.”
“In the first half, when we conceded the ball, we completely lost control of what we were supposed to do, we wanted to do it so quickly, but there was no quality. If we look at the game, when we had the ball, that’s when we needed to be ready for danger, because we lost the goal in a dangerous situation.”
Why do Milan always have to chase games or make up for a poor first half performance, is this a psychological issue with their initial approach?
“I don’t know if it’s a psychological thing, but this is the second game in a row where we didn’t play in the first half,” Amorim admitted.
“We can’t concede this goal because we still have a lot of problems in creating chances, we will be nervous, we will be anxious and everything will be more difficult.”
Someone suggested to the coach that instead of worrying about scoring difficulties, why not start by making the defense more solid?
“Everything is interconnected, we weren’t really organized and if you saw the first goal we needed to hold our position outside the box, instead we let players into our area. We need to improve because the chances they created for us were when we conceded the ball.
“We can’t concede goals and we need to score first to take the game to a different level because we didn’t create many chances.”
Players are also very static and don’t pass the ball to anyone running.
“It’s true, especially in the first half, there was no one running behind, and when our team had two holding midfielders, they had no space because there was no one running behind them,” agreed Amorim.
“We discussed it at half-time. We need to look at the whole game and after the break we started better but then we conceded the second goal so they dropped back near the penalty area and waited for us to convert.”
Some of the selections raised eyebrows, including Luka Modric being on the bench the entire game, while Diego Moreira was dropped despite scoring two goals against Lazio.
“Rabiot played the first 90 minutes and we don’t know if he can do that again because it was the first time he played the full 90 minutes. The same goes for Pulisic, you can see now with his injury history, he only played 45 minutes.
“Morella didn’t train for two days because he had personal matters and he wasn’t cooperating with the team, so there are some situations that sometimes people don’t know about.
“As a team, we need to improve, not just one or two players not playing, but also some things we didn’t do when we were in the penalty area, for example, even near the penalty area, no one entered the penalty area to receive Chukweize’s pass.
“We need to be more precise, we need to be more organized.”
Amorim is a lifelong Benfica supporter and this was their first win over Milan after two draws and four defeats, including the 1963 and 1990 European Cup finals.
Antonio Conte was in the stands at the San Siro and the crowd jeered at the final whistle, with pressure inevitably mounting on the coach as his vision was nowhere to be seen in the performance.
Will he change his system or stick with a 3-4-2-1 formation?
“I’m always changing, we need to start from a base, we have two months to work. We lost tonight, but we will find solutions to adapt to these games because we need to create an idea, but we also need to win, so of course we can adapt,” Amorim concluded.