Zachary Athekame has been one of the bright spots for Lyon so far this season, certainly making the most of his loan spell away from AC Milan.
After seeing him in pre-season, Ruben Amorim – together with the Milan management – made the decision to send Athekame out on loan. The Paulo Fonseca-led Lyon expressed their interest and got the deal over the line quickly.
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As revealed by the formula, a dry loan with no option to buy, Milan’s main motivation for the loan was to ensure that the youngster gets the right playing time to grow. So far, it would be fair to say that they absolutely made the right decision.
Perfect start for Athekame
While Athekame likely would have struggled to get a starting spot at Milan this season, he has started all of the league games so far for Milan. In addition to that, he has quickly become a key player for an unbeaten Lyon side (three wins and two draws), registering two goals and two assists.
Yesterday evening, he added one goal and one assist to his tally in the game against Stade Rennes, receiving a lot of praise on social media and high ratings on stats websites. Fonseca is doing something right with the Swiss international and Milan are over the moon so far.
Of course, considering just how well he has played so far, it’s only natural for the Rossoneri to ask if they should have kept him instead. However, as said above, he likely would have struggled to get consistent playing time and then the situation would have been different.
Not that loan moves are a guarantee for playing time and development, though. David Odogu was also sent out on a dry loan this summer, joining Toulouse, but he hasn’t played a single minute yet. Milan fans should thank the support of Fonseca, in other words.
If Athekame continues like this, then there will surely be some offers waiting for the Rossoneri at the end of the season. The fact that there is no buy-out option means they are safe and can just enjoy the wing-back’s season with the French side.
What we’ve done over the last few years is completely bizarre!
We fired Pioli and hired a new attacking coach with plenty of ideas. He immediately identified one of our biggest problems: Theo and Leão.
Then we fired him and replaced him with a counter-attacking coach, but once again, we didn’t give him enough time.
As if that wasn’t enough, we then hired the most defensive coach on the planet, and he changed the system to a three-man defense.
It’s strange enough that we fired Fonseca and replaced him with an attacking coach without even having the proper players for his style.
But we should really ask ourselves: what would have happened if we had never fired Fonseca in the first place?
ill give some defence to ac milan management, even if maybe all the above should have never happened. theo and leao were our best players by a mile then , and we still relied on them , so every gmae they didnt play felt sluggish. Fonseca however was absolutely right about them but never got time to do things his way. then we got concencao whos expectation were to high considering he wasnt even meant to be there for more than 6 months.he got shot in the foot by musah and theo in the champions league (if those games were under him). Allegri has a good track record in serie a, and he swtiched to a 3 man considering how terrible our defence is.we saw prevous season tehy struggled in a back 4 , so back 3 is our only option unless we get a good thats not gila. also allegri had little support in the transfer market so theres that.and now cardinale decided to put full faith in amorim which i have only little doubts,i like amorim. but hes even more stubborn then allegri. this could be our downfall especially in the 2 no.10 roles, where we stil havenet found pulisics partener
You are right, we should have stuck to Fonseca a d endured,we would have been a proper team now..athakeme deserves to be a starter next season,you could see it even from last season..,
The management has no clue. At the end of the 3 years, we got rid of Leao and Theo and trying to play a similar style to what Fonseca had in mind. Remember he had one of the worst transfer seasons and had to deal with drama because of our “superstar” duo.
Athekame, DeWinter and Nkunku deserved to stay this year. They could have all been good alternatives and even starters.
Athekame is going to perform really well at Lyon and be ready for the offers by the end of the season. And you can bet they will sell him.
Athekame has seemed like a natural RB in a back 4. Is he as good at RWB ? If amorim thinks so, then great . However I reckon Amorim will consider him not inverted, and not WB material for that slot. Would he be as good on the left?
All im saying is, the move to Lyon has been great for his development. I think he will be deemed not exactly suited to Amorim ball and we’ll cash on on him, perhaps 30mn or even 40mn (if his form continues). If so I wish him well , seems a really good RB for a back 4 system.
Leao has got to be the most overhyped player around. He played for Gala against Trabzonspor and did nothing. Salah hit a hatrick and got an assist. True talent vs hype.
I watched the highlights. He did one of his standard shots. Nice setup buy his teammate and he of course couldn’t even hit on target.