The Banality of Evil and Kalulu's paradox
On making a mistake while following the orders of your superior.
Adolf Eichmann was an official of the Nazi party, an officer of the SS and of the major organizers of the Holocaust. In 1961 he was processed in Jerusalem and charged with 15 criminal charges including war crimes, crimes against humanity and crimes against the Jewish people. What’s interesting about this trial, as wonderfully explained by Hannah Arendt in her renowned Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, is how Eichmann never displayed guilt for his actions because he was simply doing the moral thing since he was “only obeying orders”.
Drawing a parallel of far less importance and gravity with football, occasionally it might happen that a footballer makes the wrong choice while following the dictates of his manager. This is exactly what happened on Tuesday night to Pierre Kalulu, AC Milan's central defender. Before delving into the analysis, it is worth briefly clarifying what kind of player Kalulu is, what his strengths and weaknesses are, and what Pioli wants from him and why.
Kalulu joined AC Milan when he was 20 in the summer of 2020, he was known for being a right-back who could also play centre-back if necessary. Kalulu is a182 cm, fast, athletic, and proactive defender. Not a top-level passer, but quite good at carrying the ball. At first he was mainly deployed as a right-back but he didn’t get much playing time, until the injuries of Kjaer and Romagnoli that almost forced Pioli to give Kalulu some minutes as a centre-back alongside Tomori. Kalulu and Tomori are quite similar in their strengths and in their weaknesses as centre-backs: quite bad in the air, not great passers, and with huge problems in their positioning (especially inside the box) and in the reading of the game in general. On the other hand, their athleticism, speed and proactivity gave Pioli the opportunity to further emphasize the defensive approach of his team, which was already characterized by high defensive line, intense pressing and radical man-marking. The perfect way to minimize their flaws as “traditional centre-backs” and to maximize their qualities.
With this small but huge change Milan's defense became top-tier and challenging the Rossoneri was a nightmare for anyone. It wasn’t rare seeing Tomori and Kalulu following their man at the same time even until the defensive final third of the opponent team. Pioli went extreme and it worked great.
Back to the present, Milan have been struggling tremendously since returning from the World Cup especially from the defensive point of view as clearly shown by the 4-0 suffered against Lazio, probably due to a physical decline of the offensive players that is having big fallouts on the defensive players considering that their out-of-possession system relies so much on intensity. If Milan's approach last year also allowed single players to charge up and find new energy through the perennial winning of individual duels, the current moment of difficulty leads to developing doubts and being less confident in one's abilities.
How does all this relate to the Eichmann trial and Kalulu's match on Tuesday against Lazio? Well, we said earlier that Kalulu is not the best around at reading the game, a flaw he compensates for with his athleticism and proactiveness. Pioli is well aware of this, therefore his demands are extremely simple and straightforward: mark your man. Always. Everywhere. In every situation. Be proactive, aggressive, and always look for the anticipation.
In Lazio's 2-0 goal, the problems of this kind of strategy became evident. Lazio attacking on the right flank, Milan were quite unbalanced because the 4 offensive players in the 4-2-3-1 didn't run back. Marusic (RB) passes to Pedro and makes an overlap, Tonali should follow him but stays quite passive probably due to tiredness, Dest is basically 2vs1 and doesn’t really know if he should should be worrying about Pedro who has the ball or Marusic who’s running in behind and his posture is so bad it doesn't help him defend on either of them. At the same time, Milinkovic-Savic (RCM) is almost in a number 9 position and he’s marked by Kalulu. Instead of just staying in the box, Milinkovic decides to run away from it, which apparently doesn’t look like a brilliant choice, but he’s aware of the fact that Kalulu will follow him no matter what, and that’s precisely what happens. Instead of just staying in the middle of the box as we normally would expect especially considering that Marusic is running precisely towards that zone, Kalulu blindly abides by the instructions his manager has tailor-made for him and decides to follow Milinkovic-Savic unnecessarily out of the area, creating a chasm inside the area where Marusic will receive the ball later put into the net by Zaccagni.
Many have understandably blamed Kalulu, guilty of a mistake seldom seen at these levels of football. But should he really be blamed? My point is that as bad and decisive as his mistake was, Kalulu did nothing more than follow what his manager asked him to do, which is generally the right thing to do.
We thus come to the paradox that Kalulu did wrong by doing the right thing, or did the right thing by doing wrong, pick the version you prefer. Personally, I am not sure where to stand, in fact I write these words more to try to find an answer than to give one to you that are reading them. Actually, the article was created precisely to hear the opinions of others. I understand why Pioli asks Kalulu to behave in that way and I understand why Kalulu did what he did, but I think that players should be taught to think for themselves and figure out independently with the help of the manager how to behave in any situation they face. Players are not pawns.
A few comments
1) Using the Banality of Evil for something like an article about a soccer is a already a bad choice but publishing this on the Holocaust Remembrance Day makes it a terrible one
2) Getting into the tech aspects
I agree Kalulu has a pretty poor understanding of what's happening in the defensive play (there are many examples of that, the most recent one is probably Milan - Tottenham when he forgot to have a look at afaicr Kane and Salae closed on him very well) and this is SMS man-marking is a brilliant example
I think Milan's def needs (at least) a leader who guides Kalulu (and Tomori) in each specific situation (Pioli can't do this "tactical" management, he is responsible for the more "strategic" management in the match) and this guy could be Simon, last year I think Maignan contributed to that pretty well
So all in all, Kalulu and Tomori need to be guided within the match to avoid mistakes like this one