When Samuele Ricci was linked, picking a place for him felt easy. However, AC Milan added quality, and a starting role became unlikely.
Ricci has been one of the longest projects for Milan in recent years. Across several mercatos, there were talks of him being a target, yet the Rossoneri never made the right steps to bring him from Turin, until last year.
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Arriving as the first midfielder of the summer, it seemed he would have a pretty guaranteed spot in the team. However, the arrivals of Luka Modric and Adrien Rabiot changed that. Though this may not be a bad thing.
Ricci’s story so far
As MilanNews writes, with the arrivals, it seemed Ricci would be ‘another double’ to play in front of the defence. But Massimiliano Allegri shattered these thoughts, giving him a key bib in the first training session, proving he would be a big part of his team.
This has shown on the pitch too, whilst he has only made nine starts, he has featured 20 times in Serie A this season, always being available when called upon and always delivering a solid performance.
There have been shakes, but he is still young and without consistent game time, there will always be moments. The bright sparks are there, though, and the Pisa game showed this once again. Playing centrally and even on the wing, he was vital to the winner, whilst also playing a good game.
His mindset is fantastic, and his post-game comments reflected that, with statements about him feeling like a starter, even if he has not been one.
It leads to the celebrations of him being an ‘Allegriano’, and it would be hard to deny. Potentially, he could even start against Como next, and he can certainly make a difference and there would be no better time than at San Siro in a key game.
Reminds me a lot with Tonali’s first season with Milan. But with a better performance, and still with a lot of potential in the future. We should think about him getting start instead of Fofana, as he looks like he has more to over in his recent performances.
100% he looks amazing from the time he have got and oh my goodness it’s insane how he moved from regista to box to box and still performs like this. I mean a goals en 3 assists with the playing time he is getting kinda impressive plus many off his subs was just to sit back and defend which he also has done extremely well. Just hope we keep him unlike we’ve done with our other young, well performing midfielders
Allegri seems to have Ricci at the bottom of midfield pecking order. So far he has not played well enough to replace anyone in the current starting trio. He is correctly being utilized late in matches.