Sandro Tonali’s departure was the rotating door moment for the arrival of Tijjani Reijnders, and now, it could be time for the latter to make his own AC Milan departure.
When Milan have been so poor, it would be easy to shine. However, stating Reijnders’ performances are a shining light in a bad team would be a disservice. Put simply, the midfielder would be a star in any team, and he has the identikit to be a star for years to come.
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So, it seems likely that there will be a number of teams asking about the former AZ Alkmaar player in the summer. As Tuttosport’s morning edition stated, the performances have not gone unnoticed by Europe’s elite, as relayed by Milan News, and as a result, there will be plenty of knocks on the door.
Real Madrid and Manchester City have already begun to take notice of his situation, and offers are likely to arrive this summer. In fact, the situation can be compared to that of Sandro Tonali’s departure, as unfortunate as that is for the Rossoneri.
Despite this, the Diavolo ‘remain confident’ of their ability to retain the player, especially with him signing a new contract this year.
He is gonna be a bench player at City and Madrid
Reijnders will be star where ever he goes
It’s not a risk when it’s ownerships philosophy.
Still, Reijnders would be easier to replace than Tonali🍿
It’s kind of funny that you say that it will be easier to replace Reijnders than Tonali when it was Reijnders that replaced Tonali and outperformed him.
Reijnders is a box to box midfielder, so is Tonali.
Kessie, Bennacer and Krunic were playing the Fofana role while Tonali was playing Reijnders role.
Both of them were/will be easy to replace if Milan hires a proper decision maker.
Replacing Kessie has been proven hard to do. Players like Tonali are a dime a dozen.
Players like Tonali are a dime a dozen.
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🙄🙄🙄
Tonali’s strength was leadership. Technically speaking Reijnders’ skillset is far superior to Tonali’s.
Wrong. One is mezzala and the other is box to box.
As usual you just say random nonsense. Rejndiers is a AM/Mezzala, Tonali is DM/Regista. Rejndiers as a DM has been a disaster. Brahim Diaz was playing the Rejndiers role.
Tonali a regista?
And you say that other people talk nonsense.
In what club or national team is Tonali playing as a regista genius?
For the Italy NT Ricci and Rovella play as a regista/DM while Tonali plays as a mezzala.
For Newcastle, Bruno Gimaraes plays as a regista/DM while Tonali plays as mezzala.
For Milan it was Kessie, Bennacer, Krunic that played deep and stayed back while Tonali had more freedom to go forward as Reijnders.
If you don’t understand what you watch, don’t talk.
Brahim Diaz is a forward who played a winger and a n10 when Milan had a defensive RW like Saelemaekers next to him to cover for him..Brahim best Milan season was when he played as a RW. Maybe you are hallucinating but Reijnders never played as a RW and he rarely plays as a 10.
100%
Agreed
God bless u… Tonalli is far more difficult to replace than TJ.. as far as I am concerned, TJ sucks as a DM in d double pivot… TJ is a box to box Midfielder, and average as an AM… He will build a bedroom on mancity or Madrid bench
Are you watching the same Milan as the rest of us? Because TJ in our Milan IS an Attacking Mid and he’s so terrible that he has scored most goals? Must not be that bad… hmmm…
If you believe Reijnders has outperformed Tonali, it suggests a misunderstanding of their respective profiles. Tonali is a complete midfielder—equally capable as a regista, box-to-box, or mezzala. His game combines the grit of Gattuso with the vision of Pirlo, making him highly versatile. Reijnders, in contrast, is more of a pure mezzala. This makes him less suited to a double-pivot system, as defensive duties aren’t his strength—a fact backed by statistical data from his time at AZ. He would be more effective in a three-man midfield, operating as a number 8 playmaker rather than a trequartista
I was hoping for this.
Wrong and wrong.
Reijnders is not a box to box but a mezzala.
Mezzala is a wide playmaker, a player who supports offensive phase. A mezzala is less defensive than a pure box-to-box midfielder.
Tonali was a pure box to box.
So no, he did not replace Tonali. RLC was supposed to fill in for Tonali. He even took #8 shirt.
Oh and to add, 90 millions later and a crop of non functional deadwood and they are yet to replace Tonali.
By your definition then, Tonali was neither stellar in the defensive phase, nor pivotal in the offensive one. True Reijnders is useless defensively but at least his offensive output is far beyond what Sandro could deliver, even if they are in different positions.
Neither Sandro nor Benny had much of an impact after Kessie left, which is the reason both of them were so stellar in the Scudetto season.
So yea, I’m inclined to say that Reijnders (and Puli) in exchange for Tonali was a great move in terms of contributions and numbers.
Now if we can get Tonali back and make him captain, would be even better – his leadership was his trump card. Outside of that, Tonali the player would be easier to replace than Reijnders.
No, that’s your take on my comment. Tonali was a workhorse in both phases but mostly in defensive one. He was 70% Gattuso and 30% Ambrosini of our midfield at the time. He was also a player who knew how to dictate tempo and had great positional awareness. For offensive output we had Diaz and Bennacer. Even Kessie was more offensive than Tonali. Reijnders is Kevin Prince Boateng 2.0
After Scudetto season when Kessie left, Tonali took the reigns of the midfield and despite having big hole to fill there and no proper reinforcement (Bennacer out cold, Krunic lost, Vrancx wtf), he did stellar stepping into Kessie shoes. So much that he was sold for 70 millions. People easily forget Liverpool came in either for him or Barella and while Inter issued hands off warning, Furlani slapped 70 million price tag on him and Liverpool backed away. But not PIF’s Newcastle.
Reijnders for Tonali was never a great deal or a deal at all. One was sold for 70 millions, the other bought for 20 millions and again they are practically completely different midfielders. They addressed replacing Tonali with RLC and Musah first summer, Fofana second summer and now Bondo. That’s around the sum Tonali was sold for and tell how how it’s turning out for us? Right.
Reijnders is not a box to box midfielder, he is a mezzala, in other less fancy words, a bit more offensive and less defensive (and actually in Reijnders’s case 0% defensive). Yes they have the same position on the pitch, but their roles/way of playing is totally different.
Yes it was mainly Kessié who defend while Tonali had more freedom to roam forward, but at least Tonali could defend a bit and has currently similar stats to Bruno Guimarães in terms of clearances and a higher rate of recoving lost balls. Tonali is also in a higher percentile in interceptions, blocks, clearances and aerial won, actually everything except tackles.
And since you did mention playmaking, can you elaborate on Reijnders’s playmaking ? Tijjani doesn’t playmake, dominate the midfield or whatever. He’s good at carrying the ball (one of the best actually) and coming from behind to score. You can say he is some sort of very deep lying forward, but as a “midfielder” he is quite average. His assists and expected assited goals are quite low for a player who did often play as an attacking midfielder.
In this currently abysmal team, Reijnders leads in no type of pass. Pulišić is the best at through balls, he doesn’t do swith type of passes and certainly he doesn’t lead in crosses. And defensively, it’s funny how much you criticize Leão and Théo for being so poor but somehow Reijnders who is just as poor, gets a pass. He is so much of a liability defensively that we have to figure out how to play him higher and having others defend for him.
But don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying Tonali is better, actually Reijnders’s current peak might be higher but their styles and roles are just too different to make your conclusion and it is certainly myopic to only look at G+A
And on a final note, I don’t understand your hatred for Tonali. He was instrumental in our first scudetto in 11 years (and probably the only one in the 2020’s from what it looks) and was also instrumental in letting us to a UCL semi-final (yes I know we had an easy draw but it’s still a semi-final). Is it his fault we didn’t replace Kessié ? Is he supposed to be Tonali+Kessié ? I guess Gündoğan and De Bruyne are also sh!t since none of them did well since Rodri got injured. Did he leave in a particular bitter way ? Well at least he got us money, money we used to purchase the so precious Reijnders and some other cones in the midfield. Did he gamble and could have gotten us in trouble ? Yes and he did get Newcastle in trouble, but they didn’t seem to have issues letting him back and now he is a starter with them and now they’ve won their first title in like a 100 years and are having a far better season than us.
So personally I can’t understand the hatred towards a player who gave his all with us just because “tHeRe ArE bEtTer PlAyErS OuT tHeRe”.
100%
Preach
It’s always the Reijnders hype.
The man is not even top 10 midfielder in the world let alone Europe, and yet he gets glazed unnecessarily and very unreal. I wonder if there is another reinjders at Milan. 🤷♂️🤷♂️
outperform.. we’re never @9 while Tonali here
I’m not so much concerned about everybody being fair game at Milan, my biggest gripe is the 2nd rate players who get targeted to replace our crown jewels. No plan, no strategy…how are we supposed to grow with the constant dismantling of our best players. And I hope sincerely they don’t cash in on Tijji…
Kessie is a box to box midfielder not a regista. In Pioli’s team, Tonali and Bennacer were DM while Kessie and Krunic were CM. He used Krunic at the end of the season as AM to start the pressure from the top while Kessie was directed to stay back as a third defender to cover for Theo and Leao lack of defensive contributions
Well given it will be 2 years before we may be in CL again, the roster by then will feature little or no players with CL experience and thus we will be starting from scratch
We got 60m for Tonali, bought 3 midfielders for 60m. 1 is good and worth 50m or so and the other 2 are worth close to ZERO.
In that time the team has gone from being on the brink of greatness to midtable mediocrity.
So sure sell Tiji, reinvest and go no where.
At this point nobody cares as we wont even be in CL
Imagine we had different owners and we had a midfield of Tonali, Bennacer, Kessie, Krunic, Tiji, we would be golden.
Ciao Mike, Ciao Theo, Ciao Rafa, Ciao Tiji
Hello $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
p.s Can the E.U put a Tariff on dumbass yankee owners?
RLC was the replacement for Tonali. Excellent work by Moncada.
Just chill, this articles about players move 3 month before mercato are useless… Yes also I think few players go , but not whole squad. You talk every day about Theo, Tomori, Thiaw, Leao and now it’s time to add another one 😀. Not every players want to go. One bad season doesn’t mean we will always be in 10 place… just chill and wait what happen in summer
another chance for financial scudeto,
capital gain baby..
we still’ve RLC “the Monster”, Musah “the Wonderkid” & Bondo “the Wonderkid 2.0”
we’ll save, future look so bright
Ah the usual hate on past Milan players that actually delivered and brought, more than the current overhyped and praised and protected Milan players.
This discuss never gets old. I guess Maldini Heir was right on the mark about something there. This fans would demonize the older players that actually contributed to the coming back of Milan, and yet praise to high heavens the new players that have not done anything that equals the work ethic of the old.
It’s always about shiny new toys here.
I used to think Kessié was wrong for leaving us for a club where he won’t be a guaranteed starter, but now I think he’s done the best thing in his life.
By leaving right after the scudetto, he somehow acquired a god-like status in the eyes of some fans while EVERY SINGLE OTHER contributor to the scudetto (and I mean every single one from coach to players to management) didn’t escape the hateful comments.
And I’m not saying that some of them don’t deserve criticism or maybe some did overstay afterall, but somehow the “new” is always better and the “pre-scudetto players” are also somehow better (notice how these same fans have high esteem for Donnarumma and Çalhanoğlu).
Indeed. It truly beggars wonders.
Those pre scudetto players are somehow excused and forgiven in their own part towards the transfer saga, and all the blame heaped on the management of then.
In other news old players/coach who actually brought gold are now average has beens that cannot even lace the current crop of Ac Milan “stars”.
If milan sell reindjers this summer, i will hate furlani for the rest of my life.