Massimiliano Allegri will have the AC Milan captain present from day one of preseason, and it is the start of a year to try convince Mike Maignan to renew.
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As MilanNews recall, Maignan seemed destined to join Chelsea early last month, after a stormy last season with ups and downs, mistakes, the usual miraculous saves and with a new contract practically defined and then revoked by Milan.
The Frenchman was keen on the move to the Premier League, but an agreement between the clubs was never found. Maignan tried to force the issue a bit through his agents, but without ever reaching a definitive breaking point, and the calls from Allegri were important.
Turning the page
Allegri has made it clear that he wants Maignan to stay and that has been his stance since day one. The new head coach eager to work with an quality player with a great personality. Tare, in last week’s press briefing at Casa Milan, took stock of the situation.
“Maignan is not leaving, he will be at Milan next season too. There was interest from a Premier League club but in the end an agreement was not reached, knowing that Maignan is a point of reference not only on the pitch but also off it,” he said.
“We decided to focus on him and look forward together. The market is unpredictable but for us he remains a fixed point of this team. We need to convey a bit of enthusiasm and for this reason we are trying to understand what is needed to improve this team.
“They will all be players who are functional to this project to increase the quality of this team that was already strong.”
The CEO Giorgio Furlani continued along the same lines: “ There was interest from an English club, it was not considered interesting. Mike is an important player for Milan and he was very correct, as was his agent.
“There was openness to this interest but at the same time there was no forcing on their part. The results will judge the medium and long-term future.”
The fact remains that Maignan will go into the last 12 months of his deal and at the moment there do not seem to be the conditions for a renewal. The burn of the verbal agreement reached weeks ago that was then pulled from the table still stings.
After the free farewells of Gianluigi Donnarumma, Franck Kessie, Alessio Romagnoli and Hakan Calhanoglu, the diktat was set to sell rather than let important players leave for nothing. Geoffrey Moncada even confirmed it.
Allegri and Tare will therefore have a delicate and important task: to mend the rift, make the player perform at his best and convince him that staying at Milan is the right choice, above all in sporting terms.