Ruben Amorim says the scrutiny around Milan has not shaken him. On the eve of Saturday’s away match against Lazio, he said the criticism he faced at Manchester United was so heavy that nothing now at Milan could feel worse.
The timing matters because Milan go into Lazio Vs Milan with seven points from their first three Serie A matches, while Lazio have nine and a perfect start under Gennaro Gattuso. Amorim was speaking before a game that already feels like a test of whether Milan’s early results match the standards he has been asked to deliver.
Amorim framed that pressure as part of the job. He said the team would always come first, that he had been asked to propose attacking football and score goals, and that Milan’s approach has not been built on guesswork. In his view, the side has a precise idea and nothing is left to chance.
That confidence sits beside the problem he is trying to answer. Milan beat Torino and Venezia before drawing 1-1 with Juventus, a match in which Federico Gatti scored the equalizer in stoppage time. Amorim said Milan had more possession than Juventus, but also admitted that at times the team was forced to drop deeper because the opponent was better. That is the friction in his message: the intent is attack, yet the performance has already required adjustment.
He also tried to turn the focus toward the coach across the dugout. Amorim called Gattuso a Milan legend and said he is an important image for the team, adding that the former midfielder’s talent is not the only lesson on offer. Passion and aggression, he said, are qualities Milan need more of now. It was a pointed way of saying that style alone will not settle the argument around this team.
Lazio’s opening run adds weight to that argument. Their three straight wins made this only the third time in the club’s history that they had started a Serie A season that way, after 1974-75 and 2012-12. Milan, by contrast, arrive on seven points and under more immediate scrutiny because the draw with Juventus came after questions about Amorim’s choices.
The wider debate also stretches beyond one match. Frattesi scored three goals in his first three Serie A appearances for Lazio while on loan from Inter, a benchmark that underlines how unusual fast starts can be. For Milan, Cisse is now the figure to watch: after scoring against Torino and Juventus, he could become only the third Milan player to score in each of his first three away Serie A appearances in the era of three points for a win, following Maurizio Ganz in January and February 1998 and Krzysztof Piatek in February and March 2019.
That is the pressure on Saturday. Amorim has already said he has lived through louder criticism at Manchester United, and he insists that did not change his idea of how Milan should play. The next judgment will not come from his words, but from whether Milan can take that idea to Lazio and leave with more than a point.
