Pioli explains how Milan built a role around Leao's instincts
Stefano Pioli, speaking to Sky Sport Italia, detailed the tactical logic behind Rafael Leao's Milan role and praised the depth of Max Allegri's current squad.
Stefano Pioli has set out the tactical reasoning behind how Milan used to deploy Rafael Leao, telling Sky Sport Italia that the Portuguese forward needed specific conditions rather than conventional wide-forward duties to produce his best football.
Pioli made the comments as a guest during Sunday's Serie A fixture between Juventus and Napoli, as reported by Football Italia. He also reflected on his own departure from Fiorentina and assessed the current Milan squad he once coached to the 2021-22 Scudetto.
Why Leao was never asked to track a full-back
According to Pioli, Leao's defensive workload was deliberately minimised during Milan's title-winning campaign, not because he was incapable of tracking back, but because the team's structure made it unnecessary.
Pioli explained that Franck Kessie and Sandro Tonali effectively did the defensive work of three or four players in midfield, which freed Leao from the kind of lateral tracking duties a winger would normally carry out against an opposing full-back.
Instead, Leao was set up to follow the opposition centre-back inside while a midfielder shifted out to cover the wide area, a rotation that kept him closer to central and half-space zones where his dribbling and finishing carried the most threat.
Pioli framed this as a broader coaching principle: a manager's job is to understand what a player needs rather than force him into a generic positional template. He described Leao as "a good player and a good person on the inside" who, in his view, "needs to be encouraged in a certain way."
Pioli was more guarded about whether he and the Milan hierarchy at the time, Paolo Maldini and Frederic Massara, did enough to push Leao further. He said the work done with the winger during the Scudetto season was important but admitted they "weren't as good at raising the bar for him" afterwards.
Leao left Milan for Galatasaray this past summer in a permanent transfer worth €38million before bonuses and sell-on clauses, according to Football Italia.
Moreira draws comparisons, but Milan's current spine impresses Pioli
Pioli pointed to Diego Moreira as a player carrying some of the same qualities that made Leao so difficult to coach into a fixed defensive role, saying Moreira's performance against Sassuolo had caught his eye.
He singled out Moreira and Adrien Rabiot as two of Milan's most important current performers, and praised Mike Maignan for a key save made during the win over Inter.
Pioli described Milan as a side that is "really strong" with its leading eleven but one that, in his assessment, has shown more fragility once changes were made during matches, citing Amorim's substitutions as a turning point in that particular game.
He also suggested that some of Milan's summer signings needed time to adjust before showing their level, which he believes explains why results have only recently started to reflect the squad's quality.
Luka Modric and Goncalo Ramos both drew praise from Pioli, who said the former Real Madrid midfielder still has the legs to influence games and that Ramos is doing "a great job" as Milan's central striker.
Asked to assess the squad overall, Pioli said Maignan remains "the best in an absolute sense" among goalkeepers for his shot-stopping and general involvement in play. He added that Milan currently have "four or five" players of top quality, naming Modric, Rabiot, Strahinja Pavlovic as "a top defender," Koni De Winter as a player still developing, Ramos as "an excellent striker" and Christian Pulisic among that group.
A sabbatical after a difficult spell in Florence
Pioli has been without a job since leaving Fiorentina early in the 2025-26 season, and told Sky Sport Italia that the break has been necessary even though he misses coaching.
He said he turned down offers from abroad because he wanted to succeed at Fiorentina, but acknowledged in hindsight that he had tried to push standards too quickly there. Pioli said the pressure he placed on the team affected results and prevented the side from expressing itself properly.
Taken together, his comments sketch a coach who sees man-management and tactical fit as inseparable: the same instinct that shaped Leao's free role at Milan, he suggested, was the one he failed to calibrate correctly during his time at Fiorentina.