AC Milan travel to the Santiago Bernabeu tomorrow night, and ahead of the game, Mike Maignan has spoken to the media about his renewal and facing his French teammate Kylian Mbappe.
Maignan has returned to his best for Milan this season, and he deserves a lot of credit for refinding himself after a difficult season last year. Following questions about his performances last year, he dedicated himself to extra work in the gym and it has shown.
With him getting back to the top level, discussions about a renewal have been underway, and things are looking rather positive between all parties, even if there have been few updates in recent weeks. However, tying him down to a new contract will only be a good thing whenever it arrives.
Alongside Paulo Fonseca, the Frenchman sat and spoke to the media about the clash, and his words have been relayed by Milan News.
A special evening against a strong opponent, is there any news on the renewal front with Milan?
“My renewal is not the most important thing now, we are and I am focused on tomorrow’s match against Real Madrid. We have to be lucid and cool in the match, I am focused on my job to bring a positive result.”
What relationship do you have with Kylian Mbappe with France?
“Tomorrow we will play against Kylian, we always talk. He is a quality player even if he is in a difficult phase at the moment. I have no doubt that he will do well.”
How excited do you get playing against opponents like Vinícius Júnior or Bellingham?
“Football for me is always adrenaline, it always gives me excitement to play against anyone, so for me the best thing is to win together with my team-mates.”
Do you feel you are one of the strongest goalkeepers in the world?
“If I don’t think I’m the best no one will do it for me, I’m in the top five players as a goalkeeper but I still have to improve, my priority anyway is tomorrow’s game.”
What courage should Milan have tomorrow?
“Every match has its own history, between the derby challenge and tomorrow’s match there is a lot of difference. Tomorrow we must have courage, attack and defend, courage to play our football, we are not afraid.”
We beat Inter. We surprised Inzaghi. But tomorrow it’s Real, and they are much better than Inter. And tomorrow it’s Ancelotti, and he is much better than Inzaghi.
The success we had in the Derby won’t happen again, tomorrow.
All that we can hope for, is a defeat by a small score instead of a humiliating large score that will also hurt our goal differential which may be important for qualification for the next phase of the UCL.
So far, Real’s season has been sabotaged by the addition of Mbappe, which has thrown a wrench into what had been a finely tuned and powerful offense.
Mbappe is a ball hog, dribbles too much, and takes shots that he shouldn’t instead of passing to teammates. That was the biggest reason for their blowout 4-0 loss to Barca in the most recent La Liga matches.
Mbappe was holding and dribbling the ball and taking ALL the shots.
And missing ALL of them.
Bellinghams has had to be played out of position and has thus disappeared, and Vinicius Jr. has also been starved of the ball.
It’s The Ewing Theory at work (named after Patrick Ewing from NBA basketball).
An alleged superstar is on a team, and it turns out that the team actually does hugely BETTER when that superstar is not playing for them than when he is playing for them.
What do you say now!?
The Lord is thy keeper: the Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand.