cooling break conceicao calabria

GdS: Summer confusion, penalty mutiny and public spats – Milan’s chaotic season so far

AC Milan are only around halfway through their 2024-25 season, and yet there has already been enough drama to fill several normal campaigns.

As La Gazzetta dello Sport write, Milan are usually headline news even when things are going well, but this season they have surpassed themselves when it comes to newsworthy events.

Summer confusion

The debacle actually began before a ball was kicked, when Milan fans protested at the Julen Lopetegui links. The management turned to Paulo Fonseca, a figure not quite as divisive but not as uniting as Antonio Conte or Thiago Motta.

Then, also during the summer, Milan renewed Luka Jovic’s deal and gave him the No.9 shirt before openly trying to ship him off late I the window. Fonseca also stated that he liked Alexis Saelemaekers, yet the directors sacrificed him to get Tammy Abraham on loan.

Fonseca perhaps knew that he was arriving and would not have full powers, but he was reminded of it. The coach said that the market was closed in his eyes during August, then Zlatan Ibrahimovic responded. “The coach is the coach, the club does the rest. We don’t need any more purchases, but the market closes when I say it closes,” he said.

Friction with Fonseca

Speaking of comments that raised eyebrows in the media, Yunus Musah admitted after the Parma game that he and his team-mates ‘didn’t know whether to press high or drop in deep’. It was the first open sign that Fonseca might not be getting his message across.

After that game, Fonseca left Theo Hernandez and Leao out of the starting eleven against Lazio. It is a very strong choice, and when he brought both on they each stayed on the other side of the field during the cooling break, far from the rest of the team that the coach was speaking to.

Then there was the Fiorentina saga. Milan got two penalties in Florence and it was confirmed after the game that Christian Pulisic should have taken both, but Theo took the first from him, then for the second Fikayo Tomori passed it to Tammy Abraham. The worst bit? Both missed.

After the defeat against Atalanta in Bergamo, Fonseca criticised the referee: “The way the referee conducted the match against Milan is evident… Every week something happens to our disadvantage. It is a lack of respect for us.” The president Scaroni’s reply went against him: “I never give an opinion on the referees’ decisions. The referees are always right by definition.”

The Fonseca-Leao tug of war became a weekly headline, to which the ex-Lille coach said: “Maybe it’s strange for you not to see him, but this must be normal. It’s not normal to see Leao on the bench, but it is normal for me when I say that the team is more important.” He would add: “I don’t give a f*** about the players’ names.”

conceicao calabria

New era, same incidents

After the 1-1 with Roma on December 29, the club decided to fire Fonseca. It was a decision that had already been made yet the coach was sent to do the post-match press conference, unaware of his fate. During the presentation of Conceicao, Zlatan said: “The decision to fire him came after the match, it was our mistake to have sent him to speak, we apologise to him.”

When Conceiçao arrived, he immediately pointed out some shortcomings in character and approach to work: “Theo and Leao are the same as all the others, in terms of how I manage the dressing room. It depends on what they do every day in training. They have to do their best, which maybe isn’t the best in their opinion.”

He would added: “The players aren’t children but men, inside the dressing room they have to take on the responsibilities too. Many players are already fathers but then they arrive on the pitch and they are kids who need someone to get into their heads?… The players are too pampered, and so am I. It’s a job, not a hobby.”

Finally, we come to the most recent game and the clash between Conceiçao and Calabria at the end. The victory in injury time over Parma provided an adrenaline rush, but the coach went for the full-back having been unhappy with his tantrum after being substituted. Luckily, the players and staff separated them immediately, but it was more ammunition for the media.

Tags AC Milan

6 Comments

  1. “The management turned to Paulo Fonseca, a figure not quite as divisive but not as uniting as Antonio Conte or Thiago Motta.”

    Motta was my coach of choice last summer but he has been very poor at Juventus.
    Based on everything that has happened at Milan we can make a case that Milan is doing better than Juventus this season.
    Juventus has 3 points advantage in serie A but Milan has a game in hand, while in UCL Milan has 3 more points than Juventus and chance to finish in top 8.
    Juventus spent over 200 m last summer and keeps spending and yet Juventus has the worst start in the last 14 years and Motta has the 3rd worst record as a Juventus coach in their history.
    Motta has issues with Juventus best player, Vlahovic, benching and subbing at half time and just got rid off their captain. Sounds familiar?
    But the sky is falling at Milan while at Juventus is all puppies and rainbows.
    That’s the power of the media narrative. Fonseca, just like Rudi Garcia, never stood a chance.
    Conte has Napoli in only 1 competition, he even got knocked out from Copa Italia. He is great when he can concentrate only on 1 game a week but give him a game every 3 days and he’ll quit on you.

    1. Motta was my first choice too but I’m happy we got Sergio over him now (my #2 in the summer) looking at how Motta’s handled Danilo, Vlahovic, Koopmeiners and Chiesa and can only seem to draw games… Conte was my #3 so it’d be interesting to see where we’d be now if we’d just done the bleeding obvious and hired either Sergio or Conte in the first place.

      1. I agree. De Zerbi was my first choice, but I don’t know if he’d be able to handle our primadonnas. You need a Conte or a Conceicao, who is Conte-lite. But it’s too bad that we seem to be limited to these “hard coaches” and can’t look at ones that might interested in developing a more attractive style of football because of the knuckleheads we have on the squad. It’s like we’re FC Hollywood II (a reference to 90s Bayern for those who are too young).

    2. agree with all your points. A key difference, though, is that Motta is one of the “up and comming” coaches. Meaning, as a coach, he has potential do be better and be “great”. None of the ones management looked at were. They were all known quantity. Sarry, Allegri, Conte, Lopetegui and Fonseca.
      I’d argue that while conceicao isnt “up and coming”, he has not been given a chance at a big club until know.

  2. Conte was never gonna work, people are quick to forget he’s a short term fix only. He signs old player with no chance of sell on value and uses a style that players will quickly grow fed up with after a year or 2. It’s every single club he’s been at. Just look at the obvious immediate downgrade of every team he’s been at after 1 good season. He’s a long term nightmare

  3. other than league standings (which we can recover) its hard to imagine a better scenario:
    – won supercoppa
    – top 8 finish in ucl (in our hands)

    of course there’s a lot more going on:
    – player mutiny, etc.

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