Charles De Ketelaere’s game has come on significantly since he first arrived in Italy, but AC Milan are not the ones profiting. Instead, it is the team in Bergamo who had faith.
When Milan bought De Ketelaere, there was significant pressure on his shoulders. A young attacker who had set the Belgian league alight, labelled as one of the next big things of football after the Kevin De Bruyne, Eden Hazard and Romelu Lukaku era moving to the Rossoneri.
In itself, that is a significant amount of pressure. However, it does not end there.
The attacker arrived when the Diavolo had just won the Scudetto, and he was the biggest off-set of the summer mercato – a huge pressure for any player, let alone one making their first move into Europe’s spotlight.
Unfortunately for all parties, it did not work out and he moved to Atalanta last season on loan, and after a successful season, La Dea took their option to purchase him this season, and he is on fire.
Speaking after his 10th contribution of the season, Gian Piero Gasperini highlighted how good the attacker has been this season, and began to offer him his flowers, and Milan News have relayed his words.
“We start a great Christmas with a victory that was difficult but strongly desired. De Ketelaere’s winner is not a star that fell from the sky, he looked for it and wanted it with power and conviction. The heart is as important as the head.”
At the moment CDK might be the best player in Seria A. His numbers are on level with Cole Palmer. But we let him go in order to develop Diaz and Loftus Cheek. He would have been great on the RW too. Just look at the last goal he scored from the wing with 5 players around him.
I am not loosing sleep….
He just recovering form and still has not proved hes ready for a big club…
Its e a sy to talk in hindsight, bur he had 30 plus games at milan and produce a zero…
Played at a wrong position completely. 😀 Take Reijnders and play him as attacker. He will do nothing.
He played nice yesterday but I’m still baffled how we never saw a glimpse of this version of him when he was at Milan. I don’t know what system Gasperini uses but I saw CdK all over the place yesterday (left, right, and center). I don’t believe it had anything to do with the system at the time he was here… Perhaps if was a mental thing but the guy seems to be playing with a free mind now. What a steal by Atalanta!
It’s almost like it takes time to develop elite athletes.
I must remember that next time I ask my local mechanic to work on my race horse (mixed metaphor).
Usually they show glimpses.. he didnt show any.. so again.. i dont talk in strawman hindsight comments….. he just didnt w0rk out and will make a small profit
As a general rule people who use “strawman” spend too much time trying to control the conversation rather than engaging in the discussion.
I’m not what ‘glimpses’ you were looking for, but I do remember he was ridiculously unlucky in some goal mouth scrambles. All he needed was a goal.
Also he’s one of a few thousand footballers who had their careers ruined by being badly managed. Modern football has to be one of the worst for developing talents especially in Italy.
Fortunately for football, Atalanta are the exception.
What do you mean how. It is simple. He came to Italy end of August. New country, culture, language. Did not go through pre season with the team. Pretty easy to see that the player should be given a chance in 2nd season but Milan were too fast. Tonali was quite bad 1st season as well, and he is Italian and didn’t move to a new culture, just a new town.
Theo and Leao also struggled in their first season at ACM. They were terrible.
That dude is not for Big Clubs. Even Paqueta play for small team.
Agree – people still don’t get it and so we have to keep hearing how we “didn’t give him time.”
Yeah totally, 40 appearances and he didn’t score a single goal. He had plenty of opportunity, he didn’t show anything at all.
Stop with fvckin nonsense. There’s no such thing as “small team players” our “big team players”. What you have are players of different levels of technical quality. CDK is becoming a very good player, that’s plainly obvious, and we don’t manage to develop/explore properly his potential – that’s obvious too. And of course we are a big club – you don’t judge this kind of thing only by the current state of affairs.
It was clear that he had potential when he played for us, but Atalanta has a squad that suits his qualities better, allowing him to be more effective. Even if you were to place him in this Milan team, he wouldn’t contribute in the same way that he does for Atalanta.
Yeah, football geniuses like Dejan and Dex (probably also Dejan) concluded he is a player for “small teams”. He will be a top player, already is. I read that Pulisic is world class and De Ketelaere is outscoring him out assisting him in all competitions…They can’t say he is good because it proves they are clueless. 😂
“Stop with fvckin nonsense. There’s no such thing as “small team players” ”
LOL. Sure there are. Some people just don’t have the mental strength. Millions of examples out there.
I would not even call us a big club at the moment. CDK is never meant to play for big clubs. So yeah, he left us for a better team. Be careful with degrading someone who is better than you next time. Learn the lesson.
Big club pressure then… semantics talk.. milan is no atalanta
What does that even mean?
How do so many people believe that on the one hand there’s this notion of ‘Big Club’ players; and on the other hand think that professional footballers can change jobs more regularly than casual bar workers???
Who is the big club mate ? The 8th place Milan ? None of our players would go into a truly big club, so leave it like that.
which one is the ‘big’ clubs btw? the one currently on the 1st position, or the 8th?
When he left, I told you that this would happen, and it did…the quality was there for all to see. It was completely obvious to me that this was a quality player who justed landed on the wrong foot in Milan. If we had just waited…
Like Maldini told us when they bought him; this lad will be a top level european player in a couple of years…
Leao played nothing in first 2years. But he is great player now.
Tonali was not convincing,had very poor 1st season on loan at Milan. But we see him making Milan win scudetto and champions league semi final.
Theo,Ismael,kalulu were very raw, inconsistent with lots of fouls but they are best player’s now.
Someone with experience of Maldini, understand who is what. If Maldini wasn’t fired, Dekaetelare would have been still playing for Milan.
Hindsight
Tonali and leao didnt geet 30 games producing zero…less and produces more and showed talent
Cdw was a nervous wreck
What? Leao and Tonali both played more minutes than CDK in their first season. Do you know that you get 1 game in stats even if you play 30 seconds? I don’t think you do.
We still waiting Dea to buy him out