AC Milan will announce the appointment of Paulo Fonseca as their new head coach this week, a report claims, ending a long wait after weeks of speculation.
This morning’s edition of La Gazzetta dello Sport (as seen below) has a section titled: ‘It’s Fonseca’s time. Announcement coming soon. Zirkzee-Milan: promise of goals. Paulo’s official announcement soon. Joshua smiles, the Portuguese has always made his No.9s score’.
The papers talks about how Fonseca managed to find some balance to his style at Lille, reducing the amount of goals conceded in the league by 10 from 2022-23 to last season but still helping Jonathan David score 19 times, even though he had a long Autumn drought.
The hyper-attacking coach of the previous year became a man attentive to balance. The constant, however, is the performance of the attackers, who with him traditionally end up at the top of the scorers’ table. This means that Joshua Zirkzee – Milan’s main target – has a guarantee.
Milan have decided to announce Fonseca as their new coach in the coming days now that he has officially left Lille, otherwise they would have had to wait until the end of the month. The plan is for an announcement on either Wednesday or Thursday, when the coach should land in Italy.
The plan is to try and give him Zirkzee as a first gift. The club have no problem paying €40m to Bologna as per the release clause and no problems guaranteeing him a salary of €4-5m net per season, but they won’t pay €15m in commissions to its agents.
Sky UK reported yesterday that Arsenal and Manchester United are interested but Joshua has made it clear for some time that he wants to stay in Italy. Milan and his agent Kia Joorabchian are in no hurry but the impression is that the interest is mutual and an agreement can definitely be found.
Fonseca is also talking about other positions with the club. He wants a more attacking right-back, with Emerson Royal of Spurs a target Milan want to land for below €20m, and a defensive midfielder like Youssouf Fofana of Monaco.
Is this how you want fans to start their week you crepe hangers.
I don’t understand why it’s taking so long to announce Fonseca. We already know our fate, come on. Maybe they’re waiting to announce Zirkee at the same time to avoid another backlash from the fans.
Maybe one month less to pay for Fonseca to sweeten the deal for Cardinal and Scaroni 😂