There is rightly a lot of talk about Matteo Gabbia after his derby heroics for his boyhood club AC Milan on Sunday night, and it could unlock a couple of doors for him.
As Calciomercato.com write, Gabbia was born in Busto Arsizio which is a suburb of Milano and he grew up as a fan of the club, making his way through the various levels of the youth academy before becoming a first team player.
He made a transformation from central midfielder to central defender and looked ready to forge a regular role under Stefano Pioli, and yet he remained behind other players like Fikayo Tomori, Simon Kjaer, Malick Thiaw and Pierre Kalulu.
Gabbia learned a lot from Kjaer who became a sort of mentor to him, but in the summer of 2023 Villarreal came calling for a loan and he chose to accept, given his desire to play regularly and develop. That loan would end up lasting just six months as he was recalled due to an injury emergency.
The Italian was very solid in the second half of last season and he hoped for a call from Luciano Spalletti to tell him he was part of the squad for the European Championship in Germany, which never came. However, a call-up now ‘seems to be a matter of time’ given Spalletti was in the stands during the derby.
Gabbia must have also made Zlatan Ibrahimovic smile, who said of him in recent months: “Gabbia should have been in the national team for the European Championship, after the experience in Spain he has grown a lot. I can say that he has been transformed by the experience in La Liga.”
Milan meanwhile are rooting for him and will soon have him sign a contract renewal until 2028, doubling his current salary of €1m net per season, an absolutely deserved award for a player who has always given everything and more for the club of his heart.
Matthew cage what a growth
I always support Gabbia to be in long term Milan project. Did he make mistakes during matches? Sure he did. But who didn’t? Pavlovic did, Tomori did, Thiaw did countless errors. And by having Gabbia in the team, problem with registration will be partially solved as well.
Some people will say with Gabbia, actually there was no need to sign Pavlovic. In this case, i don’t agree. Having depth and rotation options is crucial within 3 competitions. And having competitors in their position will give positive impacts to players anyway.
Every defender, player and human makes mistakes. The question is the number of mistakes and whether the benefits of having a coherent, long term defensive partnership outweighs all of the chopping and changing to find the mythical flawless defender.
And we don’t need depth or rotation in CB of all positions. CB pairings should play 40-50 matches together per season and 200-300 over their careers. This was the secret to Ramos and Pepe (plenty of mistakes there) and Chiellini and Bonucci (again plenty of mistakes as Bonucci showed when he played for Milan).
The signing of Pavlovic probably cost us a few points by needlessly breaking up the Gabbia and Tomori partnership. It also cost Simic, who alongside Thiaw and Kalulu gave us 5 CBs.
Was that not enough depth?
What we needed and still don’t have is a DM who sits in front of the defence and protects the defence.
Pavlovic was such a typical signing of the last 20 (that’s twenty) years. We again didn’t focus, and insisted on fiddling with settled positions.
This is why we have not had an established CB partnership for 20 (that’s twenty) years.
Instead of Pavlovic for 18M€, we could have renewed to Simic and kept Kalulu (who is now decent as a RB with Juventus). We also could have gotten Mats Hummels for free.
Pavlovic’s added contribution was him being left footed, but so far he didn’t show anything great.
The whole left footed CB thing just seems to be more pigeonholing designed to fuel more transfers.
I mean this is how the advertising industry has operated since the 1960s – inventing problems that needed solving.
And it seems to be how the modern transfer market works. There’s so many people involved in the game who have nothing to contribute to the sport beyond transfers so they have to keep inventing problems/transfers that need to be solved.
Add in the media hype and Z list celebrity status that comes with being some agent or club director or owner, and that explains about 75% of the transfers each window!
I said before the derby, Gabbia is our best defender. Keep it up!
I was confused he wasn’t even in with an outside shot of the Euro squad. This is long overdue and more than deserved.
He’s the Buongiorno we had all along. Now go get a recovering Scalvini on the cheap and we are set for years!
Scalvini is gonna be 21 in Dec and has missed dozens of games for atalanta already. Not worth cashing out for.
I would go for him in place of Thiaw sale
Let’s just hope he doesn’t injured in one of those stupid international games.