AC Milan’s technical director Geoffrey Moncada is in London and should meet Joshua Zirkzee’s agent today. According to a report, important hours are ahead of us as Milan are ‘in a hurry’ to close the operation.
Zirkzee impressed everyone this past season, scoring 12 goals and assisting an additional 7, whilst playing with a very modern style. Milan have been following him for months and the negotiations have now entered an advanced stage.
According to Gianluca Di Marzio on Sky Italia last night, as cited by MilanNews, Moncada is indeed in London but didn’t meet with Zirkzee’s agent yesterday. Instead, the meeting with Kia Joorabchian could take place today.
“Milan’s transfer man, Geoffrey Moncada, is in London. Zirkzee’s attorney, Kia Joorabchian, also lives in London. We all know that the main issue for the negotiation is the very high commission requested by the agent.
“Moncada didn’t meet with Joorabchian today, he might meet him tomorrow [Saturday]. These will be very important hours, Milan are in a hurry to understand if they can close the Zirkzee operation. If not, then they will concentrate on other objectives.
“The player’s agent is in a little less hurry because he knows that other opportunities can arise in the Premier League. Milan will have to bring Joorabchian’s request to reasonable levels,” he stated.
It remains to be seen what will happen, but Milan are clearly very keen on bringing the Dutchman to the club. The fact that he missed out on the Euros (due to a recent injury) has helped the Rossoneri a bit, but the deal is still not closed yet.
The guy has never played a single netherlands senior international match in his career whatsoever so assuming he would have been automatically called up is mere speculation because coaches generally would have picked a player earlier in the season to test him with the team if he was in the plans. It probably will happen soon though but im not especially convinced that he would have been called up had he not had a minor injury.
I think he was in the provisional squad, but I think Koeman did not take kindly to the speculation that he may play for Nigeria.
Many ex Dutch legends have called for him to be in Germany, but many English fans have done the same for Tomori, the only English central defender with real pace(except Kyle Walker) when the current crop have no real pace at all.
International football coaches all ego and no brains!!!
He has been out since May 11 until June 5th so unless they have tried to see if he could become fit it seems unlikely. To be fair if he actually has aired that he might choose the Nigerian international team instead why would any coach take up space for other players ? I see no reason then but I’m sure there must be some indications well known by the coach so I would take hearsay in the media with a grain of salt. I nevertheless doubt that he would be called up at a crucial point of time without any international experience right before the European Championship because his best form was in the first half of the season so the coach would have had enough time to make sme assessments already by then, so why wasn’t he called up back then.
Well thats also fine but in the end its not those who makes the decisions so it doesn’t really matters and in regard of Tomorri I’m not so sure I would even call him up either after his current performances this season. Had it been after the scudetto season then I would though.
Maybe some but its also a fairly gross exaggeration because the coach will also have to decide who fits the group the best and I’m not only talking about player qualities but also group dynamics and the international teams doesn’t have the benefits of training the players on a daily basis so they are far more strapped for time to sort out things with minimal preparation compared to the clubs.
Yeah I totally agree, he has never featured for the senior Dutch side, it’s nonsensical to assume he missed out because of an injury. Koeman said he would have “considered” calling him up, but in February he was also excluded and Koeman commented that he didn’t play enough like a striker for his tastes.
Oh ok I wasn’t aware of that quote of his but it certainly doesnt exclude what I said then.
I think that this transfer is still largely uncertain because it is quite questionable how this meeting with his manager will go today! A lot depends on other possible offers from England. If someone from the Premiership was ready to pay that commission without any problems, then everything would become very complicated because our only trump card would be the player’s will to stay in Italy.
Guys i Trust the management. If we really get Zirkzee and Fofana (as it look like) and add a Strong CB and a RB we war Good to go. Also i think, that we can keep Leao, Theo and Maignan for the next season.
When Fonseca dont make the Same Mistakes Pioli did, we can play for titles
Good talk. Hope we keep our key players, too.
Play for titles. But for how long? December?
This team is years away from seriously challenging for titles. Maybe coppa if we get lucky
No, our team is good with that Additions. Also Chuku, Okafor and musah maybe shine more under Fonseca. I hope we can solve the injury problems too. Inter are the favorites but can they play another Season like this? Juve and Napoli with new coaches… Atalanta will probably loose some key Players.
Inter will be favorites but I certainly believe with the right additions, less injuries and a quick transition for the new coach that we will be in contention for the scudetto. Inter will most likely not be able to keep up as high a standard as this year as we also saw with Napoli so I don’t think your assessments are far fetched. We can also add to the equation that some of the other Serie A teams will have far more players playing various international tournaments this summer than AC Milan so those clubs will more easily have a bunch of tired and potentially injured players when Serie A starts up again.
Yes, the other Teams will have Problems too! Lets see, if the Right Additions were brought and how Fonseca can work with the team.
Even though I’m not fully convinced of Fonseca I will nevertheless show him the benefit of the doubt even though I would have chosen differently I’m just glad we wont end up with Conte or Mourinho whom I would have had a difficult time to stomach.
@ Martin Bernhard
I also have my doubts about Fonseca. My choice would have been de Zerbi because he is a Milanista and played beautiful football with Brighton. There was a system to see, which I totally missed with Pioli. But I also think Fonseca is better than Conte. He plays 4231 or 433, which is what we have the players for. He can handle young players well. I think he is not a bad choice.
Yeah I agree De Zerbi would also have been one of my choices. Motta and Xavi would have been some others if we isn’t allowed to have currently unrealistic dreams of Klopp. I absolutely agree it would have been more problematic to hire a guy like Conte as the transition would have been more steep and problematic than on paper hiring Fonseca due to the facts you already pointed out. That and that he seems to be as volatile as tnt when things doesn’t goes his way. I nevertheless liked Conte the player but not really the coach.
Fonseca will most likely meet the criterias of cl qualification and hopefully play some better football than under Pioli while still challenging for serie a. I liked Pioli for a great duration of time and will stay thankful for what he did for the club but he also made some really dumbfounding tactical decisions from time to time and towards the end it was getting worse.
I agree with your points. I think we are not yet at the stage of signing coaches like Klopp. I wouldn’t have thought Motta and Xavi were bad either, but Fonseca has a lot more experience. I’m also grateful to Pioli and he did a great job, especially when you look at the players he had in his first years with us. he took us to a new level. Last season you could partly blame the mistakes on the quality of the squad, but this season he has made a lot mistakes and I was missing a clear system.
After signing hopefully Zirkzee and fofana… do you think that the management will go for a quality CB like Buongiorno and a decent RB?
Maybe when we have a newly build stadium we will be in a better position to operate or at least that is the hope. Pioli did an amazing job for the first 2-2.5 years or something and he helped us develope some players further so we should be grateful and wining the scudetto is just the icing on the cake,
This season some things definitely whent more wrong than usual but had we won the europa league then i think the season could have been deemed fairly successful. The fact that we also crashed in cl is more down to some players wasting open chances in my view than piolis faults.
Im not really sure it depends, last year we spend roughly 100 mil but a great deal of that cash was the tonali sale, so lets say we spend 40 mil on top of the sale. Will they top that to 70 without any sales maybe then. Buongiorno would be a great acquisition but ill believe it when i see it but i would like us to get some more italians in the team.
Realistically speaking if we can get zirkzee (40mil) fofana (20-25 mil) amd a cb of great quality i would be ok with that but that would also largely depend on that we doesnt sell marquee players and renew those in need.
I think we will have a budget of around 50 mil + sales again. Selling Saele and CDK will bring in around 35 mil. I think other players (maybe Kalulu, Adli, Benny or Pobega) will have to go because otherwise the squad will be too big. Conversely, you are right that the extensions of Theo and Mike will also be expensive. I think a CB like Buongiorno will probably be too expensive in the end. Maybe it will be Kiwior or another player from the PL. For RB I like Santos. These purchases should be realistic. I also would Love some more italians…