In a matter of days the international break will be over, and teams like AC Milan will be getting players back from national team camps.

From now until May those players will be able to focus exclusively on their clubs.  It will be all hands on deck for everyone going into the home stretch—especially at Milan, who are holding on for dear life to the sixth place in the table and a guarantee of returning to European competition.

In order to defend that place, they are going to need everyone to be on form.  They especially need a few players who have been scuffling to round into shape.

With only eight games left in the season—plus the Coppa Italia final against Juventus—these three players in particular need to get back on the right track and be major contributors if the Rossoneri are to achieve their goals.

 

Giacomo Bonaventura

Bonaventura has arguably been Milan’s best player this season.  Only Carlos Bacca and Gianluigi Donnarumma could present a real case for the title besides him.

But fantastic as he’s been this season, he’s dropped off a bit in the last month.  He hasn’t been terrible, but the drop-off has been marked enough that this column called him “the Milan player most in need of the international break” last week.

Bonaventura was called up to the national team, but circumstances kept him out of game action.  He didn’t feature in Thursday’s 1-1 draw with Spain, and any plans to play him in Tuesday’s game against Germany were scuppered when he took ill and had to return to Milan rather than fly to Munich.

While it’s disappointing that he wasn’t able to make another appearance in Savoy blue, the rest will probably help him.  He’s on pace to play more minutes than he’s ever played as a professional this year; a week without game action can only be beneficial.

Having him at top form will be important for Milan.  The 26-year-old has scored six goals and notched seven assists, and according to WhoScored.com he leads the team in both shots and key passes per game.

But over his last three games he’s suffered a mini slump.  In two of his last three games—Milan’s 2-0 loss to Sassuolo and 1-1 draw with Lazio—he has completed less than 70 percent of his passes, well short of his season average of 81.5 percent.

Those numbers suggest that fatigue is starting to set in—which is why the rest he’s gotten this week has been important.  With a bit of a breather under his belt and, presumably, his illness ended, Bonaventura should be able to attack the last eight games with his usual vigor—and become the danger man that Milan will need to set up their attack.

 

Mario Balotelli

With M’Baye Niang out for the rest of the year after being injured in an automobile accident, there is a huge opening in the starting XI next to Bacca.

From a pure talent standpoint, Mario Balotelli is the best man to do it.  He has the on-ball skills that Bacca lacks, and when he’s on his game he can be an unstoppable force.

But too often he’s not on form.  He raised the ire of manager Sinisa Mihajlovic after showing a low workrate in a late-game cameo against Genoa last month, and in his first start in the league since the new year in the immediate aftermath of Niang’s injury he was barely in the game at all, raising almost no threat against Sassuolo.

Balotelli’s form now is a stark contrast to what he showed at the beginning of the year.  In his first game since rejoining the Rossoneri on loan from Liverpool, Balotelli nearly turned the year’s first Derby della Madonnina against Inter Milan on his head.  He was denied an equalizing goal by Inter goalkeeper Samir Handanovic and barely stroked another shot wide by the width of the ball.

He played well again as a sub the next week, then started the next two games, scoring once on a textbook free kick.

But then he was shelved for three-and-a-half months due to a sports hernia, and he’s failed to regain the tantalizing form he showed at the beginning of the year since his return.

With Luiz Adriano’s form equally unconvincing and Jeremy Menez potentially the subject of internal discipline after allegedly refusing to warm up before coming on as a sub against Lazio, Balotelli will get his chances to play again.  If Milan’s attack is to regain its potency and take the end phase of the season by the horns, he will need to pitch in and show some of the form that so encouraged fans in September.

 

Andrea Bertolacci

You have to feel bad for Andrea Bertolacci.  He was unlikely to ever justify the fee Milan paid for him this summer.  He’s a good player, but €20 million was a massive overpay—the fee was likely influenced by the fact that Bertolacci is young and Italian.

But even though he doesn’t deserve criticism for not living up to his outsized fee, Bertolacci hasn’t even been playing to his own level this season.  He can be an excellent passer, as evidenced by his eight assists with Genoa last year.  Only seven players had more.

This year he’s only managed one, along with one goal.  WhoScored also notes that his average key passes per game have dropped to only one after registering 1.4 at the Marassi last year.

Part of his drop-off comes from the formation Mihajlovic has settled into as the season has gone on—he’s ill-suited to be part of a midfield pair in a 4-4-2.  But he’s the primary depth piece behind Riccardo Montolivo and Juraj Kucka in midfield, and with Kucka only two bookings away from the disciplinary threshold for a suspension he may end up needing to start before the year is out—to say nothing of the potential effects of injuries or red cards.

Bertolacci has to get back to some kind of form if Milan’s midfield—the team’s biggest weakness—is going to win the battle for control of the middle of the park.

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