Milos Kerkez has finally spoken out about his time at AC Milan and shed some light on why he decided to leave the club after such a short time.
The Hungarian left-back was brought in by the Rossoneri in February of last year and he had a lot of buzz around him. However, he never came close to making an appearance for the first team and played with the Primavera instead.
Kerkez sparked some controversy on Twitter after the move as he published a rather distasteful message to Milan over the lack of first-team minutes. He deleted it quickly and then published a more professional message.
He is now thriving at AZ Alkmaar where he is part of the first choice starting line-up and he spoke to Scouted Football about his time with Milan from his arrival at the club to training with the first team and eventually decided to leave. MilanNews relayed his comments.
How did you end up joining Milan?
“There was a lot of interest in me during the winter. Everything was going fast because the period was like this. I actually wanted to stay in Hungary to grow physically and leave in the summer,” he said.
“Two days before the window closed, Maldini called me personally, he wanted a meeting with me and my father, we talked, and it was a great attraction for me. When Maldini calls you, you’re not thinking too much.
“After that it was obvious that I would go to Milan. It was a great club and when they want you like this you can’t say no. In the Primavera you have many really talented young players and there you can grow tactically, which was good for me, I was determined to prove myself.
What is Italian football like?
“Football is different everywhere. In Italy we expect a more tactical football, in Hungary it was more physical, now in the Netherlands it is a wider football with rapid changes in both defence and attack.
“In my experience in Italy, it is always about tactics. Also in the Primavera we did an hour and a half of video analysis after each game. It was a lot of video analysis and analysis of free kicks, so I grew a lot tactically to play smart and use my head more in field. I think it was a good learning experience and the perfect way to grow.”
How was training with the AC Milan first team squad?
“It was crazy to train with the first team. The first time I went there, and I was looking around, there was Ibra, Hernández and Leão. It was really new to me. I saw them on TV two months ago and now I was training with them.
“It was amazing, but it was a really good experience. They were all good guys. At the same time I wanted to challenge myself, I was training very hard in training. I wanted to show myself to the coach and show that I can be a part of the team.”
Who have you studied the most?
“I watched Théo Hernández a lot. I still do. He taught me a lot in attacking play, like how to run inside space, how to make more space with the speed we have and how to use our speed in the best way.”
Milan decided to sign Fode Ballo-Touré as Theo’s reserve…
“I expected to play more in the first team afterwards. I expected to have a chance because I was doing better than any Primavera full-back from any team. But unfortunately it didn’t happen that way.
“Milan are obviously a great club and it is not easy when young to have a chance there. But I think with my performances and what I did maybe I deserved a chance, but you know that every club has its own philosophy on how they work with young people, so in the end I decided because of this I wanted go and play football with the seniors.”
Milan initially offered you the chance to go on loan, but your entourage was determined to grant him a permanent contract to make sure your career didn’t go wrong…
“We had a lot of offers to go on loan, but being a player on loan is a risky situation. Maybe the team wants to play with their academy player instead of you, so I didn’t like the loan decision very much. I wanted a permanent transfer if possible, and it was really hard because Milan didn’t want to give me up so easily.”
He is doing really well in AZ. At just 18 he already better than Ballo. I was sad to see him go, but i doubt he would have grown as much if he stayed in our Primavera. This was a good decision for him.
I was a bit disapointed to see him leave but the fact that he left roughly two months after turning 18 and still felt entitled to play is ridiculous to say the least, even funnier when he didnt even play a first team match for AZ last season. Sure he has gotten his debut now so guess its fine but in my view his head is too big for his shoulders. When he left he made a twitter post that was quickly removed and now he is implying milan isnt giving young players a chance when we have one of the youngest squads in top 5 leagues,
Yeah, how many of our Primavera players actually got their chance?
well in the last 5-6 years several
The first ten years is from an article i found here on sempre milan and strictly serie a debuts whereas the last 3 years including this one is what i could find and they include coppa italia matches as well.
“from the primavera to the first team – 19 league debuts for milan since 2009-10” article from 2020
2009-10
Andrea De Vito
Gianmarco Zigoni
2010-11
Alexander Merkel
Giacomo Beretta
Nnamadi Oduamadi
2011-12
Mattia De Sciglio
2013-14
Bryan Cristante
Andrea Petagna
2014-15
Davide Calabria
Gian Filippo Felicioli
Alessandro Mastalli
Davide Di Molfetta
2015-16
Gianluigi Donnarumma
Rodrigo Ely
Manuel Locatelli
2016-17
Patrick Cutrone
2017-18
Emanuele Torrasi
2019-20
Daniel Maldini
Matteo Gabbia
2020–21
Giacomo Olzer
2021–22
Luca Stanga
Emil Roback
Marko Lazetić
2022-23 pobega is at least a primavera graduate even if not coming directly from down there as he has been out on loans for several years.
How many of them are still at Milan? How many of them are actually any good and play significant role in their current clubs? And how many disappeared Or better yet, how many that you didn’t list never even got the taste of 1st team?
Our Primavera and our entire youth development is pathetic and the results show it.
I think you are confused, you say Milan dont give youth a chance then you say the Primavera is trash, if that is so then why would Milan play them in the 1st team? Where was Tomori before he came to Milan? Chelsea reserves, where was Theo before? out on loan to any side Madrid could send him to. Where was Kalulu? in the reserves. Our youth development is literally in the 1st team already. How many teams would have risked giving donnarumma the gk shirt at 15-16. To say Milan dont give youth players a chance when it is literally our modus operandi is just plain wrong.
The question of yours wasnt whether they succeeded but whether the club gave primavera players a chance and clearly they do. If you add players to the first ten years of the list that only got their debut in the coppa italia or in europe there will surely be more to add to that list.
How many primavera players do you expect to get their chance per year ? and how many matches or minutes do you expect them to amass a year ?
Thanks 1MIKEJ i think he might be confused as well
We clearly don’t understand each other, and that is okay.
Getting a chance Tonali chance, playing a sit season and then being bought and give a chance to redeem yourself, or better yet Brahim chance, or Saladmaker chance. Not playing for 2 or 3 years like shit and still being given a chance to try and prove yourself. Getting 5 minutes in a cup game against serie C team or being loaned out to Serie B or C is not that. That is an insult.
Other clubs having shit or shittier youth development doesn’t excuse ours. And the fact that Fik is from Chelsea, Kalulu from Lyon, Mike from PSG, Theo from Real… I mean almost our entire defense is from some other club and we are supposed to be an Italian club, club where Maldini played? I mean right now best we can produce is Calabria and Gabbia? That alone should tell you how horrible our youth development is.
Bottom line. Our youth development is sub par, and Primavera results reflect that. I really hope RedBird will invest more in our academy.
Well shiva no malice intended but you seem to not understand what you are saying yourself because the discusion you started whent from whether milan gave primavera players a chance which i clearly proved they have done to you being disgruntled about us using speciffic players you dont like. Quite a difference and you know that yourself.
Ive always heen in favour of utilizing young players and has had that view back since i started watching football over 30 years ago but you also need to balance the squad and sadly if players doesnt show up quicly others will highly likely take their spot simple as that.
Add to that im pretty old school in the view of a majority of players being italian in our our case and was it for example english teams vice versa. Personally im of the view that milan will end up with far more italians in the coming years as i suspect this is a transition period where we invested wisely in cheaper players from for example france compared to what we would have paid for equal talents in italy.
Seriously how many players do you expect to get their debut a season and how many minutes would you expect each of them to amass ?
There is also the question of for example the english teams playing 3 local tournaments which clearly will give them more opportunities to field young players in for example the league cup.
I do believe we should have an u23 team as juventus does as it gives us the option to play in serie c and then maximize their training ourselfs which could benefit their developement.
By the way since the 11-12 season 19 players has had their debut and of those 8 has gotten their italy international debut, doesnt sound too shabby to my ears.
Plenty of primavera got chance in the first team.
Btw I actually agree with you that he is good and it was sad to see him go, but the kid needed a little more patience or the people around him needed it. Milan cant just throw young players into the starting 11 if the management dont think they are ready, we just cant do that because we are fighting for 1st place in every competition, we have to play to win every match, with all respect, if you are a team like AZ or a Sassoulo then you can take that risk because their objectives are to turn over these players to a bigger club for a profit.
Absolutely
This boy thinks he’s better than Theo and deserve the first spot. For an 18 years old, this boy is too cocky. I’m just glad Milan sold this boy.
Beside, he’s not the only young LB with potential.
I hope we didn’t sell potential young player. We just need to loan him to het experience
Player made it clear in the article that he didnt want a loan.
it’s not by giving youth players a chance to play the whole thing boils down to pioli because pioli don’t believe in youth players just like lazetic there are coaches that will love to be replacing him with Giroud donnarumma got lucky because we had a coach who loves helping the young ones i bet if it was pioli coaching at that point in time donnarumma will never get his debut at that young age that is why i love coaches like guadiola, milhajlovic, Eric ten haag, Julian nargelsmann,klopp, And de zebi this kind of coaches are the ones who can give a 16 or 17years old match debut with out fear look at players in our youth like Chaka troare,coubis,el hilali, Emil roback and the rest pioli should trust in the youth more thank you
I like his ego. Reminds me of Ibra “I dont do auditions”😂😂😂
Sometimes these things drives pplmto.be great
Well. Today is September 24th. We are a day after Kerkez debuted in the Hungarian national team against Germany (you know the result).
He played 90 minutes, and we saw that he is absolutely ready for adult football. If he would still play at Primavera or play minutes in Milan, this debut would have been delayed for years. We can call him impatient, but as things stand at the moment, he made the best career move when he signed to AZ.