One of the mysteries that AC Milan must untangle going into the summer window is what will happen with Charles De Ketelaere.
Calciomercato.com write about De Ketelaere being the ‘tactical misunderstanding of an entire season and the ‘scandal stone’ that didn’t help the already problematic relationship between Paolo Maldini and RedBird Capital.
De Ketelaere above all a big question mark which could also influence the choices made in the summer window, given he registered zero goals and just one assist in 32 league games in which he seemingly failed above all to get to grips with Stefano Pioli’s tactical ideas.
In the new managerial set-up after Maldini and Massara’s exit, the thoughts of the head coach will be taken into greater consideration and the statements made in recent weeks cast more than one doubt on the Belgian’s future.
Maldini was the one who green-lighted spending €35m on De Ketelaere and had he stayed then he would have insisted that the playmaker get a second season, but now new scenarios are opening up.
The 22-year-old is currently with Belgium’s Under 21 national team preparing for the European Championships which kicks off on June 14, but he is keeping an eye on his smartphone while waiting for possible news.
Milan are aware of the investment they made and the need to try and protect it, so they began to internally discuss over the last few months to possibility of loaning him out to a club where he could start consistently and grow with less pressure.
Now a difficult choice awaits the CEO Giorgio Furlani – strengthened in his position with greater powers – as well as the head of the scouting area Geoffrey Moncada and Pioli too.
De Ketelaere is linked to Milan by a contract until June 2027 and has a residual value in the balance sheet of around €28m, which are figures to certainly keep in mind in view of the coming weeks.
“Tactical Misunderstanding” sums it up
Why would you insist on playing someone who spent his most successful season playing on flanks to play centrally at AM??? Hope Belgium U21 coach stay true to his word and play CdK at RW.
And he still remains as the coach?
Beats my imagination
The same coach that delivered the Scudetto last season…
Typical
But fact. You can’t refute that,No?
We saw this before with Jans Peter hauge… Maldini signed him out of sheer excitement but Pioli immediately saw that he wasn’t skilled in the overall fundamental game. All he had were fancy offensive skills. When Milan didn’t have the ball he was a stick in the mud. He was sold because he just didn’t belong in Serie A. JPH netted a profit so it’s easy to forget about it.
Same thing now with CDK. He’s not in bad form, he just isn’t good enough for the level of serie A. The problem is he will net a loss, maybe even a substantial one.
This has nothing to do with not being good for serie a, both of them would flourish in teams like Atalanta and Napoli, the issue is Pioli has no idea how to attack and it showed vs teams that parked the bus vs us.
We dropped so many points vs relegation teams because Pioli attack strategy is pass ball to Leao and hope for best.
This is sheer incompetence of the coach and nothing else.
Both De Ketelaare and JPH would be starters and getting goals/assists under any other coach but we have smart man Pioli instead.
Prime Kaka,Ronaldinho and CR7 would be bench players in Pioli’s team because they wouldn’t run all game to defend, Messi wouldnt even make squad list.
De Ketelaere, still unknown. But JPH? Just Google where he is now. Google what he did after that 1 season at Milan. “Would be starters and getting goals/assists” 😆
Geoffrey Moncada spoke to ‘Podcast Prolongation’:
“Jens Petter Hauge? The final decision to take him came with the match between Milan and Bodo / Glimt. I have to thank the ‘data’ area, who told me about this player between May and June.”
“We were in full lockdown. We couldn’t travel. And I wanted to see this guy (Hauge) live. I wanted to see his ability to accelerate, his pace changes, and his explosiveness.”
“My scouts told me ‘Geoffrey, look at Hauge’. At the end of the season, I asked my scouts to analyse his matches. Everyone spoke well of him. There wasn’t any negative feedback.”
“We don’t put pressure on Hauge. We make him progress. He came from Norway. We have players who are more ready than him like Rebic, Leao, Calhanogu. He has to work and is already part of the team, he plays games.”
“Immediately after we signed Jens Petter Hauge, at least 20 teams had called us to take him on loan from us.”
And TBH we need to be doing more of these types of deals to make money. We need to be more than just the starting players but an academy that trains players up who are sold on after a couple of years in the system.
Don’t we bought a lot of primavera players recently?
I think next year might be harvesting time.
Lol receipts 😅.
This is why I’m not convinced Maldini just went about his way to get certain players on his own volition or without consulting Moncada or Pioli.
You are correct.
Basically, all young players who come here (including CDK as revealed by sempremilan’s article last year) are based on Moncada’s recommendation. Maldini is not a scout afterall, he has no time watching young talents outside of Milan.
I’ve been saying this all along. There’s no way Maldini went for CDK and Adlinor anyone in attack without either Moncada or Pioli input. And now we’re led to believe with Maldini out that that was the problem? I highly doubt. They’d still make the same decisions