One number is enough to capture the crisis of Milan’s second team: 0.72. Milan Futuro are at a points per game average of 0.72 and it is not growing.
As La Gazzetta dello Sport recalls, in the last eight games the Futuro have drawn twice and lost another six. Legnago have won five games since August, but beat the Rossoneri twice and won three against all the other 18 teams in the league.
The season, it is clear, is one step away from collapse despite the many millions spent on the project: 12 at the start of the season, a figure to be adjusted upwards after the reinforcements in January. Milan Futuro are last in the table and risk being relegated to Serie D.
The Serie C rules state that the last team in each group will be relegated directly. Four other teams, from the fifth to the second to last, will meet in the play-offs: the 16th against the 19th, the 17th against the 18th. Two-legged matches with a simple outcome: whoever loses the double challenge slips to Serie D.
The situation is unprecedented. Juventus in 2018, in their first season with the second team, finished 12th, the same position they occupied with five rounds to go. Never, in the following years, have they risked as much as Milan in 2025. A year ago, Atalanta, in their first Serie C championship with the second team, even finished fifth, in the play-off zone.
Why are Milan doing so badly? The answers came in the summer. Zlatan Ibrahimovic personally managed the second team project. He called Jovan Kirovski to Milan, the manager who had brought him to the Galaxy, and chose his former teammate Daniele Bonera for the bench.
This was even though Milan had Ignazio Abate, a (former) friend of Ibrahimovic, a coach who had led the Primavera team to the Youth League Final Four twice, a goal never achieved by an Italian team. Abate left and signed with Ternana, now second in Group B, the same as Milan.
Milan went for a big experiment: a director who had never worked in Italy and a coach who had never coached. All with a team with a very low average age, with a 2008-born player in attack and few thirty-year-olds as a guarantee.
It didn’t work and in December Milan also broke up with Antonio D’Ottavio, the sporting director who had contributed to the team’s construction to a lesser extent. The club thus signed Magrassi, Camporese, Quirini and Ianesi in January, players with experience in the category, but the results did not change even when Bonera was fired and Massimo Oddo was called in his place.
Results aren’t everything for a team of kids, but it certainly doesn’t do a 20-year-old any good to go from defeat to defeat. Individual stories, not by chance, tell of complex moments.
Francesco Camarda chose to stay at Milan in the summer, with all the pressure that entailed, and six months later he scored just two goals. He scored more with the Under 19 national team, two in November and one at the start of the week against France.
Mattia Liberali, his partner in crime in the national team, was first a starter in Serie A, then failed in C and was relegated to the Primavera. In the meantime, he changed agent and lost confidence.
Lorenzo Torriani, a goalkeeper born in 2005, has been seen intermittently: six games with Bonera, almost always on the bench in Serie A. Kevin Zeroli, the team captain, instead went on loan to Monza in January, where he is proving to be up to the task: six games, three as a starter.
The thought then goes back to the first home game of Milan Futuro, against Carpi at the beginning of September. Camarda scored on a penalty that day, a goal that announced a season of growth. Alex Jimenez and Silvano Vos, just arrived from Ajax, seemed like two players playing below their level.
Vos, who arrived not in the best condition, remained with Milan Futuro but only once – in a 0-2 at home against Ascoli – did he play from start to finish. Jimenez, who was truly too good for the level, instead settled in Serie A. He will never play in C again.
So what would happen to all of them in the event of relegation? Milan, net of repechages and consequent revolutions, would play in Serie D, a league with very little training. The contracts would remain valid but it is clear that many players would ask to go elsewhere.
A bad scenario, with Inter ready to register its second team – the fourth in Italy – in Serie C. The only way, to avoid looking down on Inter even with the boys, is to get points, quickly.
Milan Futuro will play Campobasso this weekend, then will have Sestri Levante and Gubbio away, Ternana and Vis Pesaro at home. A direct opponent for relegation and two in the high rankings, including the return to Milan of Abate. More symbolic than this, difficult.
One thing this management lack is experience and lack of continuity.
Each and everyone trying to collect the glory instead of collective work. Ibra want to bring his own person, furlani also.
that’s what you get when you have dual management (redbird/elliot)
The utter incompetence of those in management is clear by the failure of 3 teams. The 1st team, the futuro and the Primavera.
The Primavera had been one of the best in Europe and now they are floundering, the young talents who starred on the European stage have either left (Simic – Nsiala) or stagnated, (Camarda – Liberali).
Please someone come and rescue this once great club from these foolish, gready and inexperienced owners and their band of clowns.
They sold Simic and bought pavlovic.
Like I don’t understand why would you sell a player built on club standards, and one that is darn good at that for measly 3 million and buy another defender that would need to adapt for 18 million.
I… I don’t understand. At some point it needs to be theorized that Milan is been used as money laundering operation. Because these decisions are not only inept, incompetent but also do not make any sense. Short or long term.
Who is the chess master responsible behind the scenes. I don’t know if I believe in the illuminati or free masons or such sh*t, but at this point there is an agenda against Milan. A full blown machination
Who tf other than the clownshow upstairs is surprised by this????? Nobody, that’s who. Firing a proven success in Abate and letting the no experience Ibra set up the project with other clowns who had no experience, and you act shocked when it’s miserably failing?! It was doomed from day 1. Horrible plan, horrible coach, horrible direction. A clownshow, just as we’ve grown to expect from the cardinale circus
Ibra is a buffoon. Everything that he touches turns into a disaster. He must to be fired.
This tells everything about Ibra’s management skills.
Hired his old friends from candy shop to football and here is the result.
Ibra and Furlani must to… Would be better if the club gets sold to someone who understands football a bit
Wheres Moncada theory: MoneyYourBall???
Hahahaha…