AC Milan will have only two fit centre-backs going into tomorrow’s game against Udinese and the management are looking into securing some back-up for January, with Jakub Kiwior of Arsenal reportedly a target.
According to La Gazzetta dello Sport (seen below), Malick Thiaw and Fikayo Tomori will be the only two fully fit centre-backs tomorrow against Udinese. Simon Kjaer is better and will most likely be there but he trained separately during the week and cannot be close to 100%.
Pierre Kalulu will be out for four months after undergoing surgery and Marco Pellegrino will be sidelined until Christmas, so the idea is to sign a central defender in January with two different methods evaluated.
The first is a loan from a top European team, perhaps with an option to buy, while the latter is the purchase of a player whose contract expires in June. It is the summer strategy: choose players with less than a year left on their contract, with the logically more favourable economic conditions.
There are no advanced negotiations given January is far away, but one name must be followed carefully: Jakub Kiwior. He was at Spezia for a year and a half, from summer 2021 to January 2023, where Milan first became interested in him, but now he is at Arsenal.
He is left-footed and can therefore play as either a left-sided centre-back, on the left of a three-man defence or even left-back if needed, while Spezia also used him as a defensive midfielder on a few occasions.
At the moment the Poland international is stuck behind two top-level centre-backs in Saliba and Gabriel Magalhaes, and he has started 7 games in the Premier League since January – 2 this season – plus once in the Champions League.
Those who know him say that Jakub always wanted to test himself in the Premier League but in short, he left a piece of his heart in Italy and he certainly wouldn’t be sad about the opportunity to return.
At this point, two logical points emerge. The first: we must wait because the January transfer window begins to be defined in December, not before. The second: Arsenal will set the conditions given they invested €25m to sign him back in January.
