Zlatan Ibrahimovic deserves criticism for the way that he has handled things since taking on an important role at AC Milan, a journalist has stated.
Milan are heading into the international break in a very tense moment, with the team having failed to win any of their three league games and having made their worst start to a season in points terms since before the Second World War.
There is a lot of finger-pointing and blame being dished around by the newspapers and the fans on social media, with another saga having developed relating to the cooling break which saw Theo Hernandez and Rafael Leao distant from the team on Saturday night against Lazio.
Pietro Mazzara has published his weekly column for MilanNews in which he spoke about the game at the Stadio Olimpico on Saturday but beyond that what appears to be a disconnect in the management.
“Is this really the Milan that Gerry Cardinale wants? The founder of RedBird, who arrived incognito at the Olimpico (why not communicate this?), watched disconsolately as the Rossoneri drew against Lazio in a match where, between the pitch and the stands, all the shortcomings and fragility of a structure that is too American to function in Italy exploded,” he began.
“Cardinale was sitting next to Giorgio Furlani and Geoffrey Moncada, but he didn’t have his right-hand man next to him, namely Zlatan Ibrahimovic. There’s no point in beating around the bush and it’s equally useless to look for support: Ibra isn’t moving as he should have.
“He’s getting everything wrong, from communication (including social media) to in-person actions. Ibra is the man in charge within Milan, but if these are the results… Houston, we have a big problem. His absence in Rome (for vacation) is a very serious act for the one who should be the man on the pitch of the structure.
“Ibra left the team and coach alone in the match in which the fragility of Paulo Fonseca’s choice as coach was revealed. It is not acceptable, it is not something that went unnoticed, it is not a ‘Milan’ thing. Adriano Galliani, his point of reference, would never have done it.
“It is clear that RedBird’s philosophy of not putting a real and credible figure on the pitch next to the team does not work. The problems are the same as last year and, in some ways, they have been amplified.
“On Saturday night, after the match, a heavyweight sporting director (like Giuntoli, for example) would have overturned Leao and Theo Hernandez, net of the official explanations in front of state TV.
“And he would have done it with the full support of his own management because that scene, seen worldwide, is a scene that has done a resounding damage to Milan, to its image and its prestige since it came from two who had the honor of wearing the captain’s armband.”
I don’t get it. What should Zlatan have done? Called of his vacation and rushed to olympico because Theo and Leao was cool enough?
And who knows what Zlatans responsibilities are? Probably noone else but him, Cardinale and the other higher ups.
What does this journalist know? That we don’t know? Cause I don’t know anything other than speculations about what Zlatans actual role is and his potential power.
To blame him feels a bit misguided at this point.
Since his long public interview, he is face of Milan.
Everything is managed by him. Speaking to media, about players, mercato etc.,
Furlani is just an accountant.
It should be either Zlatan or the clown Moncada whom we have never seen him publicly.
The role of Zlatan is very clear by all his interviews one sided but being a sporting director Moncada never comes to media this is what confusing and questionable to management.
Zlatan should have stayed untill the Lazio match then anyway there is international break.
for the problem now, you think Fonseca or the players listen to Furlani or Moncada? they will not give a damn to them. this is the reason Zlatan was appointed but he preferred his vacation than the Team
A responsible director should have NOT gone on vacation while a game was being played. NO serious professional director does that.
What he could afford to charge his plane ticket?????
International break was a day away he could have postponed but evidently couldn’t be bothered. Disgusting. He deserves every bit of criticism. He is a PUPPET and nothing more it sadly seems. Shocking to say the least. I thought he would promote positive change but he’s all about social media posts and quick witted responses – it’s not funny anymore
Act professional and do your job or leave
I agree with you. But, this is just beggining. Zlatan does not have intelectual capacity like Maldini, for this kind of job. Everything about Zlatan is marketing and self promoting. He wants to be bigger than ACM, but… that is not going to work in a good way.
Elliott and RedBird biggest mistakes is not hiring a proper sporting director to run the sporting department. Not ex player who has zero experience in anything except playing football.
Ownership is responsible for that.
For the other part. Why is there a need for a constant presence of this guy or that guy for the players on the pitch or milanello to act professionally?
Do they need their parents around to supervise them so they don’t act stupid?
Theo and Leao are not young anymore. One game Zlatan isn’t there and they do this? This is more about their character or lack thereof than about who isn’t in the stands.
I mentioned inter and Lautaro the other day after watching their game. Their captain is Lautaro Martinez who is the same age as Theo. He has been at inter only 1 year longer than Theo has been at Milan. Lautaro has been their captain for 2 years now. They are up 4-0 and he is pressing, running and making tackles, setting the example, as a leader should, but Theo needs Zlatan or Paolo around just so he behaves or doesn’t throw a fit, tamper tantrum and cause a scene.
Theo and Leao, along Calabria, are the longest tenured Milan players. This is their 6th season. How long we going to look at them as some young players? They should be the leaders on the pitch. No one can lead from the stands during games.
We can try to deflect blame as much as we want, but this is on those 2 alone and no one else.
Ownership, management, Zlatan are guilty of countless other things, but this one is on Theo and Leao.
Interesting that you mention Lautaro who just received a huge raise.
He was a leader even before the raise which he deserved? Not to mention that he is a top 5 player in the world over the last year and a half.
Theo has never been a leader and his game has fallen off over the last 2 years.
Do you throw a tamper tantrum at your place of work while you are waiting for a raise or do you still behave professionally?
You seem to have a need to constantly excuse the player’s bad behavior. Just like you are always so understanding of Tonali’s gambling disease. I wonder if you would be so understanding if someone with a gambling disease mugs you because he needs your money to pay back his debt. Would you call the police or you’d be trying to be so understanding of his ‘disease’?
Perhaps we should sign rabiot who was a leader
I defend the players, you defend the management, we know the tune my dear Zzzzzz 😴
Theo was a top LB, if not the best LB in the world, for 3-4 years, and he still doesn’t get paid even half of what new Inter players get paid. Sorry, the problem is the management. These sort of problems did not exist with previous management and everyone knew their roles. Maybe the management should take responsibility for not knowing how to handle a big club like Milan. This is not Lens FC or Nantes FC. This is AC Milan. If the club is too big for their ego, then they should simply leave and give the ownership to capable owners.
Who tell he was best player at that position? Did he get some award? Did City,Real or some big club ask from him at transwer,not some newpapers talk? Man i think we all make wrong desicion put him and Leao at some great players.Truth is something else,they was good players now they both just have only speed and some skils,nothing else.
Inzaghi had also difficult situation at the beginning of his tenure at inter, but he never throw his players under the bus. But here its clearly evident problems are not because of players but because of bad tactics from Fonseca.
Which coach has said i don’t understand why my team played like that in 2nd half? have you seen managers like that.
Does any manager left out his 2best players from team talk when you should have to win the match and his reply was i didn’t see them if they are near or not.
In every club, many players get disappointed with coach.but it’s coach job to manage them this is reason we call him manager.
No club/manager in the world treat the way Theo/Leao were treated if they think they are leaders for the team. You have no logic to say that Theo is leader here, because for fonseca he is not leader.
Team need Zlatan when they was an issue between players or players/management like this. It’s clear, problem started from Parma match not the day of Lazio match but still Zlatan left for vacation like he is still in playing days.
Who should resolve this problem now, as coach is adamant to speak with players nor players . Now when they comeback they need to play 3matches in 7days and 2 of them are most important matches of season (liverpool , derby)
This problem should have been resolved before lazio game but not after
While I do agree with you that Leao and Theo are in the fault here (I will never agree with a player being lazy on purpose nor sulking on the sidelines), but I do believe the management is not completely innocent here.
Every since the beginning of the summer (or even last year), you could notice a big difference between what the management says vs between what Theo says publicly. We can make a lot of theories about this, but it’s clear that communication is lacking, if not completely absent.
Theo and Leao made a mistake or even mistake, but I do feel that instead of communicating with them and trying to solve the issue in a more private manner, the management (+ the coach) decided to scape-goat them and make a public example out of them. The problem is, they are our best players and if we care about this season we can’t bench them forever. But if we assume discipline is more important, we’ll have to accept sacrificing this season and getting a new left flank next season. In either scenario, Milan is the loser.
Also, this whole “being a leader” thing, you either have it or you don’t. Lautaro might have it, but neither Theo or Leao have the mental attributes to become leaders even if the conditions are perfect. Some players are captain materials from a young age, while some others can spend their whole lives in the same club and never earn the armband. Theo should have never become vice-captain et Leao should have never gotten the number 10 jersey.
It’s not clear what Ibra’s what’s job but he’s not the CEO or chief scout.
Once again we see the usual suspects lining up to insult club legends.
It seems that the more connection a person has to the club the less they’re respected. The newer a person the more respect.
Rather questioning how two of our star players over the last 4 YEARS have suddenly lost their discipline these same people are insulting these club legends and siding with the new manager who we barely know from Adam.
The love (and excuses) for Pavlovic is instant. Attacks on Calabria constant.
It’s all so superficial.
We demand loyalty but show no loyalty.
I said it after Fonseca was suggested and I will repeat it again. Moncada, Furlani and Ibra should not be the management that Milan deserve. They are children running one of the biggest clubs in Europe and the transfer window and the start of the season have shown off their work to the rest of the football world!
Have a look at Juve and Napoli what they did in the window and not to mention past year when allowing transfer targets go to other clubs. One to mention, Thuramto Inter!
Cardinale should sack them now and get people professional and knowledgable of director and football matrix!
Ibra is really just a glorified mascot.
He’s not making strategic decisions.
Ibraimovich has been skillfully set up by the management to divert criticism away from themselves.
They chose him, and Fonseca neither of them fluent Italian speakers, to be the scapegoats to be blamed as unable to answer questions in a clear manner, and therefore unable to furnish explanations for a job badly done.
So, while the sport’s press and those “in the field” scratch their heads & keep attacking these two characters for their obvious ineptitude, ac milan’s managments, the real cause for the critical present situation, have nicely insulated themselves from all kinds of judgment.
While you make some good points, Ibra speaks very decent Italian; I’ve heard him speaking Italian and it’s not bad. Fonseca on the other hand doesn’t speak good Italian at all. This is another of the multiple reasons why his hiring was mistaken. We should have jumped on Thiago Motta immediately and should have offered him something he wouldn’t refuse so that Juve wouldn’t have the opportunity to get him.
I think if there needs to be blame attributed and a head to role, there is a simple solution.
Who decided to get rid of Kalulu and buy Emerson for the guts of 20m?
The answer to that question is the 1st person to go.
Certain things can be fixed, the form and fitness of players, tactics, formation, lineup etc.
What cannot be fixed is the Kalulu/Emerson debacle which is the perfect example of the problems we have
Yes, so weird!
How were they thinking?
If Royal doesn’t succeed then we can at least say that we saw it coming.
My guess would be Moncada.
Pretty sure they hired Zaltan to be the scapegoat.
Red bird removes him from milan but keeps him in their other bussines venture and all is “well” at milan.
Holy trio SFM saved for another day
The AI doesn’t work so well ? 😆😆 I’m shocked…
It is expensive being cheap. The mangement is clearly not up for the task, as several mention above.
If they were they would have hired a better manager than Fonseca.
If they were, they would have signed a proper DM.
If they were, they would have signed a decent #10.
If they were, they would have signed a better RB.
This is gonna be a loooooong season. I predict Fonseca get sacked at some point, and Pioli will be re-hired as interim manager, because he is still under contract with ACM.
The foundation that ACL could have continued building it future on, upon the suprise Scudetto, have vanished.
It is expensive being cheap.
Agree 99%. I just don’t think they will call Pioli back as they’re driven by their monstrous egos. Better waste the budget to pay a third coach, like they waste the budget on useless players.
Pioli did one mistake and it was to win the Scudetto early because there were more expectations after that, despite the team losing top players and getting poor replacements like Origi or Pobega. Overall he’s been impressive, considering that he had to develop his team during a global pandemic and had to work with the Rangnick’s threat over his head.
The plandemic helped Pioli it didn’t hurt him.
Put zlatan, furlani, moncada, fonseca and cardinale all together in one huge boiling pot and dump them.
THEN BRING MALDINI BACK TO SOLVE THIS FKUCING SITUATION.
It is interesting how naïve people are when they say Milan should dump Cardinale and his entourage. Don’t they understand who owns whom? Cardinale owns Milan. Milan doesn’t own Cardinale. Nobody can force Cardinale to leave. That is unfortunate but is the truth. Short of a huge fan movement to completely avoid buying tickets for San Siro games and refrain from buying merchandise to the point that Milan would not be profitable, Cardinale is not going anywhere. And even if we the fans were able to get a very committed and wide-spread movement to sabotage profit lines, the big profit in modern football resides a lot more in developing and selling players than in ticket and merchandise sales, so not even that might be enough to push Cardinale out. Therefore it would be more productive to try to put pressure on Cardinale to hire a competent sporting director and a competent head coach than to try to push him out.
He’s not the Sporting Director.
Am recently having very serious doubts about tomori and loftus cheek. They both seem to have become third-rate players, slow, weak, hesitant, unsure …. england selector was perfectly right to leave them out for nations league qualifiers.
I still insist that we need a Sporting Director, not Zlatan pretending to be one.
If we’re comparing him to Maldini then we can agree that he doesn’t have the same gravity in training or in presence as Paolo, never will.
As sporting directors they are both flawed but Maldini had a way to command respect and get the best out of most player as he was always there observing.
Zlatan acts more like an advisor and even in that capacity it’s still mostly about him with his “God created Earth…” jazz, selfies, insta posts and insta post selfies on vacation while the team is struggling. Ibra is completely tone deaf.
Best run clubs have stellar Sporting Directors with a vision to bring in players that work well together in a functional system. Someone that would raise eyebrows when a name like Fonseca is chosen to replace underperforming Pioli. Someone that would say “Mediocre coach mostly yields mediocre results”, regardless of why Fonseca’s name came up in the first place.
RedBird’s vision for Milan is a long-term project, as is evident by the acquisitions. But w/o a great SD it’s gonna take more mistakes and much longer time to get it right and to a truly successful level.
Meanwhile we are seeing cracks in the team. The Theo/Leao incident may not be anything serious, but on the other hand we hadn’t seen anything like this under Pioli, no matter how terrible the performances may have been. Also, Pioli never benched the two of them, unless it was load management or injuries.
Players have to take responsibility to perform like there’s no tomorrow, and take accountability when they flop – not just sulk on the sidelines.
The Coach has to take responsibility to fix the problems that are evident and persistent for three games straight, and fix a formation that hasn’t worked so far.
The Management has to take responsibility for appointing a mediocre coach to lead players starved of success and who want to win while they can. Fonseca may turn this around still or may completely alienate the best players and drive them out. If this ends badly, this is completely on the management. As is the fact that they spent 15mil+ on player that is worse than the one they were trying to upgrade on. No matter what their thought process is.
I think our players are mostly good, outside of some. There’s a lot to be done and achieved with this group. But appointing Fonseca to do so was a complete miss. As was using Zlatan to replace the void left by Maldini. As is the fact that we don’t have a SD.
Sorry for the long input.
I agree with you 💯
Well said @ACM1899
LOL I meant to say I agree with you MOSTLY…
Redbird is a long term project but NOT to WIN titles but to remain profitable. There is a HUGE difference.
We do have some good players – BUT – the strategy of FOR EXAMPLE: spending 80M on 5 players for “depth” vs spending 80M on 2 KEY better players has to be brought into question. Always signing players because they are cheap or bargains doesn’t work as we are seeing. There is a reason these players are avail for so cheap like RLC – 16M – because he IS inconsistent and doesn’t always show up and other teams had enough of him so got rid of him. Can’t build a serious title winner like that. BUT agree a real sporting director would fix SOME of it – other is Gerry and opening the purse strings so we can buy SOME ESTABLISHED STARTING caliber players that don’t have questions marks all the time and not end up w trash like Emerson types
“they spent 15mil+ on player that is worse than the one they were trying to upgrade”
it’s failed spectacularly esp the one who got bench is a player who respected by the entire squad (captain & last Grinta we’ve) + almost all goals we’ve conceded is counter attack from that side where he failed to stop-ball.
i don’t blame Leao & Theo
excellent post
Don’t be sorry for the long input. The problems are numerous so the input is long. This post of yours is the best post of this forum, in the last several weeks. Well done. You are 110% correct.
Excellent article!
This article is 💯💯💯💯💯
Zlatan is a puppet and Gerry DISCONNECTED to the team
These clowns cannot handle any criticism so they sneak in and out of a stadium and another doesn’t even show up to avoid it. But like Paolo said they will be fist in line at the trophy ceremony lol. They have A LOT to learn about football in Italy. It’s shocking Zlatan doesnt know or simply doesn’t care about that.
Galliani, Maldini and Massara NEVER did that
This problem is the responsibility of the current management, they have no respect for the history of this club. Theo dan Leao is a talented player who was founded by the Maldini era, and several other players. They experienced a decline in quality more because they were uncomfortable with management’s treatment of the people (directors, coaches, previous players) who had contributed to rebuilding this team (Scudetto team) since the previous bad era. So let’s not just talk about the wrong attitude of the players, but also the management’s own attitude in directing the team at the moment. I don’t blame Fonseca, but he’s just not suited to coaching a team as big as AC Milan. just that.
The current management does not respect the history of this club, it is true that no player is bigger than a club (AC Milan). so it is management’s responsibility to bring back competent people, not people who have personal interests.
oh Z.. u should go to Hollywood/ WWE/ UFC/ politics/ Andrew Tate stuff, do thing like Beckham/ Sheva/ Weah, u ruining your own good image as our legend who “stop when u r in top” don’t waste your talent
these journalist know their auidence is rabid 15 year old kids that love these dumb headlines during international break
and people fall for it every time