In the summer, Pierre Kalulu experienced several possibilities. A right-back, a third-choice central defender, but it ended with him being a Juventus player. With the Frenchman already impressing, some have compared the move to Edgar Davids’ departure from AC Milan.
Looking back to the summer, Milan knew in the early stages that they wanted Youssouf Fofana to improve the midfield. The same clarity was not had in other areas, though, and this shone in the defence.
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During the early parts of pre-season, Paulo Fonseca had trialled Kalulu at right-back, and the defender was impressing. However, with the Rossoneri reigniting an interest in Emerson Royal, the defence looked bloated, and a sacrifice needed to be made.
When Juventus came in for the defender, there were two contrasting reactions. The fans, and more importantly Kalulu, were not sure of a move, but the club seemed happy to part with him.
Now, with him thriving for the Old Lady, fans are once again questioning the decision, especially considering the Bianconeri have a €14 million buy option in the loan contract, and even though it could rise to €17m, this still feels like a bargain.
Milan News have recalled how a similar event occurred in the 1990s, as the Diavolo parted ways with Edgar Davids, only for him to become a mainstay in the Juventus team. The future is now out of the Rossoneri’s hands, unfortunately, but it could be a decision they live to regret.
Somebody in the club needs to answer for this!!
It’s an absolute farce.
The squad we have is an utter mess, not suited to any formation. How many players have been signed since the takeover after winning scudetto? 20? 30?
Instead we get dominated by Leverkusen, who incidently were beaten by Leipzig recently (the team Juve beat with Kalulu staring again)
And we have Emerson F-cking Royale!!
I have complete understanding if a good player is signed and they don’t work out, for many reasons. I cannot tolerate selling a good proven, loyal player to bring in someone who EVERYONE knows is Cr^p!!!!!
FYI
“Kalulu 8.5 – What a performance from the Milan loanee. He just got better and better during the match and made two key blocks when the Bianconeri were one goal up and one man down. Absolutely stunning.”
GdS named him Man Of The Match against Napoli as well. But hey, capital gains baby!
Buying Emerson Fng Royal was already enough to warrant sacking but getting rid of Kalulu (and to the biggest competitor!) to make room for him calls for a public execution.
Even if that called would have been made by Maldini there are simply no excuses. The one responsible for these two moves must go. NOW. FFS.
1. Calcio math doesnt work!
2. Actually Leverkusen is one of thr best playing Clubs.
3. Calcio math doesnt work!
4. Aston Villa Beats Real Madrid.
But I agree with you about Kalulu.
While I loved Davids as a player due to his aggressiveness, Davids just didn’t work well with our system back in the day for some reason or the other. However we’ve seen Kalulu play very well with us and was functional to our team. There’s a bit of a difference there
“During the early parts of pre-season, Paulo Fonseca had trialled Kalulu at right-back, and the defender was impressing.”
He was impressing so much at right back that he didn’t play one single game in pre season at RB and he played in 4 out of 5 pre season games. In one of those pre season games, Saelemaekers was playing ans started as a RB but not Kalulu. Saelemaekers also isn’t with the team anymore.
It was nothing but a report that we were reading that he was impressing. If he actually was, he would have played as a RB in the games.
He plays as a CB at Juventus. If he stayed at Milan, he would have sat on the bench. He isn’t starting over Gabbia nor over Tomori.
I wish all the best to Kalulu, but let’s stop with the exaggeration. It’s been only a handful of games. We watched him for 4 years at Milan. He couldn’t keep the starting CB position that was his, nor he could beat out Calabria or Florenzi for the RB position, and those 2 have missed a lot of time because of injuries in the last 3,years.
Looks like Juventus just lost for the season the best CB in the league. Let’s see how good Juventus defense will be without him.
Youre right Z, we Never know how things would have gone, if kalulu stayed.
We also dont know, how Calafiori would have been, if he played a year for us instead Bologna.
What is this logic? He wasnt good in preseason? what are you on about?
The article is merely referencing his outstanding form, now, this season, in real games.
Last year was a write off due to injury issues, before that he has shown to be top level.
Would have been perfect on the right side of defense to give balance to Theo roaming foward.
It was a catastrophic f-ck up and any body with half a brain knows that, hence all these articles.
Anyone with half a brain can recognize the logic in what i was on about, hence the comment.
“before that he has shown to be top level.”
He lost his starting spot a month into the 22/23 season and never got it back. What top level? He was a starter for about 4 months out of 4 years he was a Milan player. You are using the injury last season as an excuse. He didn’t lose his spot because of injury but because he wasn’t good enough way before the injury.
“Would have been perfect on the right side of defense”.
That’s only your opinion that can be backed by nothing since Kalulu almost never played as a RB at Milan and he doesn’t play as one at Juventus. It’s in my previous comment that you had trouble finding logic.
It’s no different than people saying that Milan doesn’t need to sign a RB because they have Saelemaekers. Then they saw Saelemaekers play finally as a RB and that foolishness stopped after that.
Milan management f-cked up by signing Emerson, 💯, but the solution for the RB wasn’t Kalulu.
Most fans spent 2 years calling for management to sign a RB, while saying that Kalulu and Thiaw are trash, then Kalulu leaves Milan, plays few good games as a CB and people are losing their mind. Why were fans calling for Milan to sign a RB if Kalulu was already there, not able to beat Calabria or Florenzi for that position?
Will see at the end of the season if it was a good move or bad. Fans overreacted to Colombo scoring a goal in September last season and we never heard from Colombo after that. Saelemaekers same way. Some were losing their mind because Chaka Traore was sent on loan with option to buy set at “only” 10 mil. Said that’s peanuts and Palermo will easily buy him since they are owned by City group and he would be worth a 100 mil in 2 years. 5 months later he left serie B to come to Milan and now he is playing in serie C.
Nothing but overreaction.
Sorry what is your solution here other than to write off about 6 players???
Kalulu was a solution. Scudetto winning solution. He evidently can play RB.
Calabria is also a solution and, yes, another Scudetto winning solution.
Same with Saelemaekers.
But I am sure the solution that’s in your head is way better.
I presume that solution wasn’t Emerson.
Maybe the moral of the story for fans is to stop demanding a new RB when we had about 5 already including two legends from the side that delivered our 19th Scudetto and third this century (I know, I know, I am living in the past, not your imaginary future with ceilings and stuff).
Don’t bother the troll mate,Z,Gio,bb,Acm1899,Goku,soccer troll,zion etc they all are the same muppet hidden under these nicknames,placed here to suck jerry’s balls.
He gave us the funds for Emerson. Same as Tonali gave us the funds for non functional crop of midfielders.
Surely by now some people around here have learnt to stop demanding the club cash in on players only to end up with so much worse???
Much better to let players leave for free? 🙂
We always was dump when is transfer politics. Kalulu is our best deffender and we sell him for Emerson and Pavlovic. Colombo is 10 times better then Jovic,and about others i will not write at all. Juve will buy him for cheap and after 2years sell for triple or more.
You realize Jovic was free right?
Colombo was free-r.
(Unless you think paying a few million yoyos in salary is nothing).
The difference is when he came with reizeger and kluivert they were cack for us and he was shipped out the next year. Kalulu was pretty decent and sustained a bad injury. It’s disappointing we unearthed a gem for little money and have failed to capitalise on the 30-50m he was being touted at in the scudetto season
Kalulu was great in the scudetto year — as a centerback. But, has had injury issues, which has made him vulnerable to transfers/loan offers. He was a steal when they brought him in. We’ll see by season end if Juve got a good deal or not. Right now, he looks good and for his personal sake, I hope he does well wherever he goes.
Funny how the Redbird Lovers screamed for Maldini to be fired for the CDK signing – who eventually proved to be a good player (14 goals/11 assists last season) – are awfully quiet when it comes to busts like Chukuweze or the stupidity of getting rid of Kalulu to a direct rival and signing a 15m terrible player in Emerson Royal. Tiago Santos was even available but we chose Emerson lol. Brilliant.
Crickets
💯
I’ve noticed. Quite awfully quiet about those things.
Calabria was available.
If you wanted Milan to sign Tiago (who?) instead then you’re very much part of the problem.
Awfully quiet when it comes to signing Emerson Royal? LOL. Check any article where his name is mentioned and you’ll see how wrong you are. NO ONE is agreeing it was a good move. NO ONE.
One of the many, many, MANY myths about the Great Milan Team is that it was, well, Great.
Between 87-94 we were great but from about 95 to about 03 things started to go awry.
During this period a number of players came from clubs where they had done well, played poorly or were undervalued by Milan, and then went on to do great things with another team including our rivals.
One of those was Davids (and his Ajax colleagues Reiziger and Kluivert who went on to do things with Barca). Others included Vieira, Ayala, Ziege and even Baggio to a degree.
This is a sign that a club is not in a good place.
When a club is doing well players will peak at the club – they’ll raise their game when they arrive from their previous club and they’ll struggle to recreate that form at the next club they move to.
This is what started happening in 03 under Ancellotti. Milan signed a number of ex-Inter players like Simic and Seedorf and these players performed better at Milan under Ancellotti.
That was the standout thing with Pioli. Generally the players performed better under him than under other managers or at other clubs. It felt like players were playing closer to their potential.
This really should be the focus more than endlessly moving players around.
Kalulu has already shown himself to be capable of being a Scudetto winning CB. We know that’s his level and the challenge was getting him back to that level which was mostly a physical challenge to minimise injuries.
Indeed the entire Scudetto winning side showed their ability as Scudetto winners. The ones we signed subsequently mostly won nothing, but there was this great assumption that they somehow would do better than actual Scudetto winners.
Even the debate around Calabria seems largely closed with everyone now just accepting that whilst Emerson Royal is not the answer, neither is our Scudetto winning FB, and the answer is Mister X With His Amazing Ceiling.
If Milan are to become the sort of the club they were in those small windows of greatness between 87-94 and 03-07 then we need to get back to being the club that supports its players, and helps them achieve greatness.
Constantly looking across the street at the more attractive girl is no basis for a stable relationship/
Please it’s a situation that was a 50 50 decision,yes if we put Kalulu’s perspective performance during the Serie A league win we could gist all day about how incredible he was but the following season he was below par and reasons behind such dramatic drop in performance is quite a misery then followed two long injuries consecutively and with a new coaching staff in place it seem difficult as the management had one condition to bring attacking might defensively and as God will have it, Milan rushed the available player with such prospects.
Davids have yet to prove himself a good player with our team as far as I remember it. Kalulu has already been a starter lineup scudetto team before he was sold to Juve