Mercato News

Official: Jovic takes the No.9 shirt at Milan – could end striker pursuit

Serbian striker Luka Jovic is officially the new No.9 at AC Milan, a move which could mean that no other striker will sign for the club this summer. 

As has been announced by the player himself on X (as seen below), he has swapped his No.15 shirt for the one that almost all strikers dream of, No.9.

Jovic is entering his second season with the club and there has been much speculation that he will be leaving the club given he was only an impact sub last season.

Paulo Fonseca has been keen on bringing in another striker to compete with Alvaro Morata, which would have facilitated Jovic’s exit from the team.

The move to give the former Real Madrid man the No.9 shirt suggests two things; he won’t be leaving the club this summer, and Milan won’t be signing a new striker such as Tammy Abraham before the window shuts.

It does not 100% rule out the idea of a new striker, but they would have to accept not having the No.9 shirt, and Milan would have their third-choice striker wearing the most recognisable striker’s number.

Jovic was far more impressive off the bench than when he started games last season, so that is the clear element of his game that must improve.

Tags AC Milan Luka Jovic

45 Comments

  1. So Mister X that Cardinale management kept promising the fans of as an upcoming big signing for the last two years is just old Morata 🤣🤣🤣

    I am starting to feel bad for Fonseca, he kind of publicly asked for Abraham and it seems like he will be publicly embarrassed.

    In the end, it is on him for trusting another ding-dong American management 🤥

    1. Look, i get your dissapointment but we should not lose our minds anymore by now. They proved that they dont want to spend huge amounts of money on players so we have to get used to be a development club with 50mil transfer budget. Only way that changes is if we somehow transform into prime Juve and start winning scuddeto year after year and get deep CL runs every season, which could happend but not anytime soon imo. Lets see what Fonseca brings, and wait until winter break to see where we are standing by then

      1. The budget is at least €80 million. The deals for Zirkzee, Fofana & Emerson were ongoing at the same time, which suggests around €80 million.

        1. LOLOLOLO

          Ya sure UNTIL $$$ is actually spent it’s NOT lol. The actual NET BUDGET is still approx 35M – same as last season

      1. 8th July, 2024:
        Is it possible for Milan to have three strikers for next season?

        Ibrahimovic: “We need to find a solution for those who won’t have space. For the three strikers: one is mister X, the one we’re aiming for. “

    4. you rather be Juventus sign an overhyped Motta and not win a single game and look horrible in preseason

      but dont worry Motta is a god he’ll magically fix everything

  2. Pfffffff……… So Dramatic. And for what? To co time the curse of the 9 at Milan after a brief commercial interruption by Giroud?

    🤣🤣🤣 Okay, Luca. Good Luck with that.

  4. Interesting 🤔 never knew taking a shirt number precludes another striker coming in or the person who took the number going out 🤷‍♂️

    1. Well it would seem highly unusual to give someone the famous 9 shirt one week and then ship them out the following week.

      And yes if you were planning on bringing in a big name striker, holding the 9 shirt open for them would be nice incentive.
      These things shouldn’t matter but they do. It’s all about image and confidence.

      1. Yes, highly unusual but not unheard of. Especially with these guys who knows lol. I do recall when we re-signed Thiago Silva one week to a new contract, next week he was gone. Not sure if the number was available to anyone then though. Doesn’t happen often but it can.

  5. Morata, Jovic, OK4 is not too bad, not to mention Camarda is lurking in the background.
    This is far from scudetto level tho. Don’t think anyone other than a 50M++ Sesko or better type player would allow for that leap anyway. Looks like were shooting for 1st place to land 2nd/3rd type deal.

  6. Milan, procurou pelo mercado e não viu jogadores para incluir em seu plantel. Mas existe o Nicolo turco, é muito parecido ao Braim Diaz. Vamos contratar Nicolo Turco

  7. Pulisic, RLC + even a few others can play there. Why invest in that position when there are clear gaps in attack and defensive mid?

  8. Not an issue for me – an upgrade would be nice but we’ve got three decent forwards already so anyone who comes in would need to be a bit special. Jovic is likely to get a start in the first game of the season so he’ll never have a better chance to make that spot his own.

  10. See? That’s how it’s done. Gerry came and immediately solved us the problem with the striker.

    Thanks Gerry.

    Now do the trick with our midfield. I really want to see what you got up your slevee🍿

  11. What has happened to our dear Milan, these Americans are destroying the game and this is just the start of franchise football. It’s clear that the target for the team is too 4 and a run in the champions league. Shame on ibra for going along with this sh*t but I guess money buys people. Now we understand why maldini walked. The death of Milan has been coming for years but this bunch have now buried us deep in commercial relevance and football irrelevance. Where are the ultras when you need them

    1. Come on Juro, I’m not saying he should be a starter or anything and I would have hoped for a marquee signing of a greater sort than Morata whom I’ve never been a great fan of to say the least I can nevertheless understand the idea to having him with us dropping further down than we have become acquainted to recently but take a look at Jovic’s stats last season he did pretty damn well for us.
      30 + 180 + 164 + 868 combined minutes played equals 1294 minutes played.
      Devide that with 90 and that equals 13.8 full matches played and in those minutes he scored 9 goals and assisting once and if we consider goals and assists equally good then its a goal contribution every 1.38 match thats by far any bad stats,
      Had i at the start of the Mercato hoped for a Sesco deal or something, ? absolutely, but even if we remain at 4 attackers with Morata, Jovic, Okafor and Camarda from time to time it isn’t really a bad offense considering the service we can expect from the wings,
      Non of the deals we have done up until Pavlovic really excites me but I can still see some ideas in who we have brought in but I also expects more before the end of the transfer window, If we talk about sales of youth players I’m less happy though.

      1. Martin, Morata’s figures are decent both in terms of minutes played (longevity) and goal contributions. But I feel his best year/s are behind him. Not saying it’s going to drop off tremendously all of a sudden (hope it doesn’t) but you never know. I’m pretty sure both him and Pulisic will not have the same or greater output season than last year. We’ll just hope they do decently enough and that the drop off is not that severe

        1. We just don’t know!

          We have no idea what will happen because such a huge part of whether or not a particular player or players perform is dependent on factors outside of their control.

          Will Fonseca be a success?

          Will Milan struggle with the massive hole in midfield?

          Have we finally sorted our CBs?

          Will Leao have a great season?

          Will Pulisic have a great season?

          What about injuries?

          What about the other teams?

          A big question will be what kind of start we have.

          If Fonseca starts well then a lot could fall into place for the players. If not, Fonseca could be gone by Christmas and we could be back to the Dark Ages.

          As usual I will set different expectations for different people:

          – for the management I want the Scudetto – they sacked the guy who finished 2nd so the minimum I am expecting is for us to go one better;

          – for Fonseca a top 4 because he’s a new manager;

          – for the players a top 6 because ultimately they might struggle due to e.g. the management’s failure to sign a DM and to bring further unnecessary disruption.

          2. Yes it’s true we don’t know. I’m just providing my forecast which has been pretty solid around these parts…each and every season.
            I dont expect Puli to have the same stellar season as last year. I also don’t expect Morata to put up 20 goals. Obvi I hope im wrong but I’m pretty sure it won’t happen. You gotta think of the changes to the team, the coach and positional changes (I don’t think Puli as a CAM would be as effective as him being on the wing for instance…another fatal flaw in management recruitment strategy). Plus we’re facing a strong and consistent Inter in the 5th round….that should tell us where we’re really at quite quickly

        2. Well Morata has never really been the high scoring attacker but I can understand his acqusition to th extend that he participates well in the game and has a pretty high work rate which should help the team in both phases but as I said never really liked him but I nevertheless welcome him here after he arrived. Yjere are no guarantees in football for anyone and even if we had bought qan expenssive player that wouldn’t come with any guarantees either.

  14. This is probably entirely a superficial thing but I would like to see them impose a 1-23 squad numbers like they have in Spain, and maybe it’s not just a superficiality thing but, again, forcing teams to focus on who there first team is, and how many they have in the first team squad.

    There could of course be exemptions for retired numbers as no one should ever wear 3 or 6 at Milan.

    Good to see Jovic claiming the No 9, and I hope he makes it his own.

    1. I will like to understand the idea behind retiring numbers. For what? They have done their best and numbers should be available. Imagine we want to sign a central back or left back and they are bent on those numbers, what will happen? I don’t see any logic retiring numbers at all.

      1. Well the decisions have already been made so should probably be rejected. It would feel extremely odd to revoke the retirement of the squad numbers for Maldini and Baresi.

        And actually given such longevity is a thing of the past that recognition is probably more important than ever!

  15. GOOD! We have Morata Jovic Okafor and Camarda. We don’t need a useless donkey like Abraham. You know what we do need? A DEFENSIVE MID! We don’t need to add an injury prone clown to the striker list when we still have no ball winning midfielder. Bad enough we blew money on emerson

  17. Jovic is a competent finisher. As is Morata. I think the main issue with Pioli’s final year at Milan was that his plays were too predictable, and the attack was to static – easy to man mark.

    Fonseca ball, requires a lot of moving in and out of space. This and strong possession football should create a lot more scoring opportunities which a Jovic or a Morata should be able to finish

    1. Didn’t we score a ton of goals?

      The main issue we conceded loads too and that was largely due to having a massive hole in the middle of our midfield.

  18. This is joke right? This year we again at Inter how he go to the top with 20 points.Fonseca and our menagment will destroy everything what Piolo bring. Poor season we will have.
    After loan Kalulu i think they need sel Theo and Maignan and Leao se we again can fight for Europe. Im very disapointed and this season again i will cry.

    1. Are you 12 years old? You reasoning is far off.

      So far we has a smart mercado. This ain’t PlayStation.

      A defensive mid as fofana and we will fight for top 4 easily

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