With the Champions League approaching, AC Milan must make some decisions about which players will be registered for the competition and there are talks of a ‘sacrifice’ being made.
Following the excitement of the transfer window, Milan now face an important period of admin. Of course, this has been happening all summer. However, this is where the club must submit their squad for the upcoming Champions League campaign.
As Milan News suggest, Paulo Fonseca must make some decisions about his European squad shortly, and from the Rossoneri’s mercato movements, there could be some hints available.
Looking first at foreign players, the Diavolo have 18 players who will not fit homegrown quotas, those of note being: Mike Maignan, Emerson Royal, Strahinja Pavlovic, Fikayo Tomori, Malick Thiaw, Theo Hernandez, Ismael Bennacer, Youssouf Fofana, Ruben Loftus-Cheek, Yunus Musah, Tijjani Reijnders, Samuel Chukwueze, Christian Pulisic, Alvaro Morata, Tammy Abraham, Rafael Leao, Noah Okafor and Luka Jovic.
From that list, one player will have to be excluded, and the report states that ‘Jovic as a sacrifice’ is being spoken about insistently.
Then, we have players who have been trained in Italy – Marco Sportiello, Filippo Terracciano and Alessandro Florenzi (who the report claims will not take anyone’s place). Additionally, there is players trained at the club, Davide Calabria and Matteo Gabbia.
This creates a list of 23 players and leaves two slots open.
On the list of youngsters, Francesco Camarda, Kevin Zeroli, Lorenzo Torriani and Davide Bartesaghi are present among others. However, Alex Jimenez is unable to feature on this list as he has not been with the club for two seasons, so from next year he will be able to be on the ‘B-list’ as Milan News refers to.
The squad will be submitted to UEFA tomorrow night (September 4) at 11:59pm, and there should be no shocks. Therefore, the squad should look like this.
Goalkeepers: Mike Maignan, Marco Sportiello
Defenders: Davide Calabria, Alessandro Florenzi, Matteo Gabbia, Theo Hernandez, Strahinja Pavlovic, Emerson Royal, Filippo Terracciano, Malick Thiaw, Fikayo Tomori.
Midfielders: Ismael Bennacer, Youssouf Fofana, Ruben Loftus-Cheek, Yunus Musah, Tijjani Reijnders.
Forwards: Tammy Abraham, Samuel Chukwueze, Rafael Leao, Alvaro Morata, Noah Okafor, Christian Pulisic
B-list: Lorenzo Torriani, Davide Bartesaghi, Kevin Zeroli, Francesco Camarda, Mattia Liberali + others who may be added.
Re “This creates a list of 23 players and leaves two slots open.”
That should read ” a list of 22 players and leaves three slots open”.
situation is worse than you have described.
Well that’s a massive squad….
Ok as it is I would like Acmilan to be switching attacking midfield like Benercer,musah and liberali then either leao should be permanent in the left wing then Noah Okafor or chukwueze should play right wing then Abraham or jovic or Morata Acmilan will regain strength before champion league
So because we have a squad mainly consisting of foreigners, we can only register a limited number of players, 1 who is already injured for the season, and have to rely on youth prospects in case of injuries and suspensions.
Well that’s going to work out well isn’t it, great planning management, this whole thing of having a team of foreigners is really helping us isn’t it.