There weren’t any doubts, but now the official announcement has also arrived: Divock Origi is about to return to base camp at the end of the season, or rather to AC Milan.
Origi joined Milan on a free transfer from Liverpool during the post-Scudetto summer transfer window but he never hit the ground running and quickly became an afterthought as he struggled to stay fit.
While he may have been looking for UEFA Champions League Final tickets for his friends during last season’s run to the semi-finals of the competition, he didn’t play much of a role at all and it quickly became obvious he would be leaving last summer.
On the final day of the window, Origi left Milan to join Nottingham Forest. The deal was in fact completed just before midnight, when the transfer window had already closed for Italy but was still open in England.
For Origi, things haven’t gone his way with the English outfit. A loan move was hoped to be the perfect method of reinvigorating his form, especially in a familiar league. However, it has not played out that way, unfortunately for the Belgian as he scored just one goal, and zero in the league.
With him earning a yearly salary of €4m net per season, there was urgency to ship him out to avoid paying his wage. Reports suggested that there were some American sides interested in his services during the January window, yet a move never materialised.
Having returned to the Premier League to redeem himself from his first disappointing season with the Rossoneri (1,188 minutes, two goals), he managed to do even worse (752 minutes with just one goal, in the FA Cup).
The option to buy, set at €5m, will obviously not be exercised and so Divock will return to Milanello in an even worse state of form and above all with his high salary. Milan will thus have the not very easy task of finding him a new place and his contract with the Rossoneri expires in 2026.
The management will hope that those Major League Soccer sides who came forward during the winter have retained some of their interest, with Olivier Giroud heading to Los Angeles FC and their rivals the Los Angeles Galaxy mentioned previously as suitors for Origi.
Either way, Paolo Maldini and Ricky Massara’s decision to bet on the former Liverpool man over signing FC Nantes striker Randal Kolo Muani – who exploded at Frankfurt and is now at PSG – looks worse with each passing month.
