Alexis Saelemaekers seemed destined to remain at AC Milan as of a few days ago, but now things have changed and he could well be on his way to Roma.
Calciomercato.com writes how Saelemaekers is an example of how illusory August football can be. In the wake of a brilliant second half of the season with Bologna, the winger was a protagonist in Milan’s summer friendlies and drew praise from Paulo Fonseca, yet now he has his suitcase ready.
“Alexis? He is a player I love a lot. I like the quality. I think he is a kind of player every coach loves to have, because he can play in different positions. He is more confident, I think he is a player I would love to keep in the team,” Fonseca said after the Manchester City win.
A strong feeling was immediately established with Fonseca, so much so that he was deployed in the first game of the season as left back in place of Theo Hernández who was not close to 100% condition yet. Against Parma, however, Saelemaekers remained on the bench as the Rossoneri lost to Parma.
Milan began to sell their surplus players with Yacine Adli heading for Fiorentina and Tommaso Pobega to Bologna. Saelemaekers could follow them out of the door, despite Fonseca’s esteem, because the management seem convinced by the idea of using him to sign Tammy Abraham.
In Fonseca’s ideas, players must not be static, either in their positions on the field or in their availability to play other roles. This is why someone like Saelemaekers is always very useful to the Portuguese coach.
He is a wildcard who can be valuable in a long and busy season like the current one. For Milan, keeping the Belgian would certainly not be a problem, but it is his versatility and sense of sacrifice that seems to have attracted Roma and the Rossoneri’s need for a back-up striker is just too great.
Victim of menagement
How can Napoli easily spent 30M for a useless player like Mctominay. Meanwhile our transfer fee is capped in 20M. What kind of quality player you want to buy with 20M?. Fofana in that price just because his contract expiring, in the last few days of transfer window, its really hard to find a new quality player
At this point I don’t understand what their transfer strategy is anymore. I don’t know how they all think we need a striker more than we need to fix the strategy that doesn’t see the striker get enough service. The point is that even if you get Halaand, he won’t do jack if there’s no service to him. And I was beginning to like the Saladmaker even more 🤦🏾♂️
American strategy is to sell all rossonerros from the club, tonali,adli,pobega,maldini,colombo,saelemakers and everyine who would fight for this shirt , they will leave only calabria because he is the king of the city
Selling Tonali was the smartest thing they could have done. And those other names don’t have the quality. I mean Pobega? Are you serious?
Is it? His suspension ended yesterday. Meanwhile the bunch of lousy midfielders brought to replace him with the money from his transfer can’t handle Torino or Parma.
Two sets of lousy midfielders…don’t forget we are replacing what replaced last year 😂
He would have been absent for a year, B. Who would we have fielded for a year? Hopes and dreams?
Oh please. It wasn’t like he was playing like a world class player anyways. Reijnders is a really good player. And what happened here was more lack of fitness. Perhaps we should have had more of a preseason. Also Fofana is a better player than Tonali alone.
And yes his suspension did end yesterday. After an entire year. Genius you are. Not.
You said it yourself: “His suspension ended yesterday”
The hell were we suppose to do last season if we had him on our books? Tonali supended and not enough money to bring in the likes of Pulisic, Reijnders, RLC, Musah, Chukwueze, Okafor. Maybe we would’ve gotten Jovic on a free, but last year with a suspended Tonali on our books and no money to make the market moves we did would’ve been disastrous.
We wouldn’t even be talking about UCL this season or a 2nd place finish, we’d be mid-table fodder.
Tijani is decent. But still, a different kind of player. The thing is, we still could get him without selling Sandro.
And again, most of the fans were angry about things that go beyond technical ability. It’s more about what he represents. Our future bandiera. Someone who gives everything on the field. Things like that can’t be valued with money.
I bet you wouldn’t have a hard time on selling Maldini to Madrid back then.
I still remember how Tonali run from one end of the field to the other straight in Lazio box scoring a winning goal in the 90th minute. I knew then that with that kind of commitment we are winning the Scudetto.
Ummm….no it wasn’t because AT THE TIME – nobody knew of his gambling issue. So NO it wasn’t the smartest thing. Easy to say after the fact.
Another Redbird Lover.
Never ends….
You don’t understand how we need a striker?
Did you not watch the Parma game?? That’s how.
Morata out and we’re picking our noses instead of scoring goals. Okafor and jovic are no more than impact subs when playing next to another striker.
That’s how we need another 9 mainstay.
I think if you put Pulisic in the 10 slot jnst3ad of RLC you’d see a massive change against Parma. It’s about a key cog not showing up time after time.
We are keeping Jovic and RLC and selling Saelemakers??? Very weird.
What this squad needs right now is to keep hold of its players and add 1 more player for double-pivot and a ST.
We can sign any Italian or u21 player without any problems with their registration.
If we get another ST, Jovic being n3 wouldn’t be a problem for me. And there are some good options for both. Konate would be ideal from Salzburg for cheap, they made Haaland and Sesko for reference… and for CM/CDM find regista-esquez. That’s it. Why are we now strengthening Roma?
Ya because once it’s a competitive game he’s not good enough. Doesn’t matter if you can play multiple positions if you can’t even play one well.
I’ll give it t to him hes a hard worker but he’s not milan material, just another borini to me.
Two seasons ago we couldn’t wait to offload him and he went to bologna and came off the bench more than he started and all of a sudden people forget how saelemaekers really is because of a good preseason? We can’t get stuck with this guy again and at least before Abraham’s rupture he was regarded as a great striker. Our need for someone like Tammy is far too great to keep saelemaekers as a 4th backup player.
Before the injury he had only scored 9 goals in 54 games.
He didn’t come off the bench more. I think he was subbed on something like 7 or 8 times.
His work rate is something we should strive for. He may not have great vision but he can pass the ball well, he has put a bit of creativity in his game and he defends well.
exactly and we are getting another muscle player… Rugby club I swear to god
to sell tonali was not the smartest if you see right now our midfield is trash tonali would have been good at the transfer window reijnerds pulisic sportiello musah is useless chukweazy has been our most expensive signing last transfer window still doing little
??? Selling Tonali was very smart. And there is a good reason for that. We revamped our attack. Tonali has a certain gambling problem and was banned.
Saelemaekers is not a position of need. He’s no wingback. And wingers we have plenty of.
What is the point of keeping him? What we do need is another 9. Not a fan of Abraham to be honest, but not a fan of starting Okafor or Jovic as a 9 even more.
So …
So get rid of Jovic instead, why sacrifice Saelemakers? And wtf is Abraham? that’s as far as our motivation runs?! not anyone higher tier like Jonathan David or even higher ceiling like Konate…
selling then Bennacer without any proper replacement, Kone isn’t a regista… Kone would be an upgrade to RLC sure, but we are keeping the latter for some reason…
If RLC is CAM and Reijnders will be forced into regista role, then we need CAM… RLC can’t be a starter… and if that’s our lineup, we are still missing Reijnders cover…
There’s no suitor for Jovic, even if there’s, the price will be under 5M. That’s not enough money to buy proper CF. We can do nothing about this Cardinale $h!t transfer fund.
Cardinale:”we need to spend more, ill give you more fund”
Ibra : ” no, we spend what we need”
That’s conversation is the most bull$h!t thing Ibra had said. He’s not a Lion anymore, He’s now a chicken
Who forced us to extend his contract?!
Look at Juve, they might have had the best mercato, rebuilding that rotting c0rp$e left by Allegri. 25 strong players with a very good coach, playing their under-23 like they had been playing senior level for years now…
Fonseca-ball cannot be understood by anyone on the team, too scared to bench burnout/lazy players with Futuros who played well during friendlies, brings liability like Tammy…
Use deferrals, loan formulas, % of resale… we need 2 players with the current squad we have. CM and ST is all we need, when we are currently at -40M. 15M for Kone and 5-10M loan+obligation for next year can give us “any” player we can agree on salary and the project…
Saelesmaekers is complete surplus. I don’t think we were ever going to keep him. And we are signing midfielders. Vos and soon Kone. Like what people want right?
And if we get another striker, so be it.
What a joke we club now 😂😂
I don’t get Milan fans and Milan management. Keeping Salaemaekers would have been a big mistake. This guy is not good enough even as a right winger or left winger.
Everyone is going crazy over Salaemakers because of a few decent performances in pre-season? Give me a fcking break.
I’m glad this move is being done and we are getting a proven Serie A striker who is still in his 20s and not another 30+ year old striker.
This deal should have been done earlier this summer.
Salaemakers and Kalulu are average at best same goes for Adli and Pobega. They are NOT GOOD ENOUGH at this level to play at Milan.
Hopefully Bemnacer will leave this summer too. Getting Rabiot and Kone makes a lot more sense than keeping Bennacer and Adli.
Bennacer is a finished player and he’s nowhere near the same quality player when we won the scudetto. So what is every Milan fan going on about?
We should be glad the Saudi’s have money to buy Bennacer otherwise we would have been stuck with another players who is past his best. I would take 30-40m from the Saudi’s just to get his 4m salary off the books.
Hopefully in January we can also sell Ruben Loftus Cheek and Musah so we can upgrade them with better quality players. At this point I would rather have Zeroli and Liberali instead of Musah and RLC.
I’m also glad that we didn’t sign Samardzic who is another overrated useless overpriced average player. Sigh!
Samardzic was not an upgrade to this squad.
Thank you. I don’t know what people all of a sudden see in saelemaekers who couldn’t even go ahead of messias. Sure he works hard, but he has no quality. Plus we don’t need him in those positions and we desperately need an alternative to Morata. Abraham scored 15 goals for Chelsea and 17 for roma before both clubs went into a mess and then him getting injured. He’s not my #1 choice but it’s somebody who’s young and can bring something to Milan that we’ve clearly lacked for years. When giroud was out look how we struggled, and we’ve started no different with Morata.
No, not again!
We are letting go the good hard workers and we are keeping the expensive and stubborn one’s around!! This is an absolute mistake 👎
I thought Milan was going to make the team stronger not weaker😞
Saelemaekers is a decent sub and works hard. He is not starting material. He isn’t a good defender and we have plenty of wingers. So, yes, Saelemaekers can be sold, no probem.
What I have way more trouble understanding, is shipping out Kalulu and Colombo and keeping Thiaw and Jovic. While neither of these four players is very good, at least Kalulu is better than Thiaw and Colombo is better than Jovic.
This will be one of the biggest mistake this management will do after the sale of kalulu to juve. I hope they won’t come back to hunt them. These are quality backups to have in a team. Tammy will definitely be worse than Jovic. I’m yet to see what Fonseca sees in Tammy that his tactics cannot do to bring out the best in Jovic and okafor in that position. A coach that can’t improve a player should have a question mark. Pioli brought out the best in Leao, bennacer krunic and others