Joao Felix joined Santiago Gimenez as an attacking reinforcement in the winter transfer window, and Sergio Conceicao pushed hard for his arrival.
According to La Gazzetta dello Sport (seen below), Milan gave themselves another great coup for the attacking department by landing Felix. His agent, Jorge Mendes, has been working non-stop since Sunday evening in London to make him available to Conceiçao.
Chelsea, who hoped to sell him to England and asked Aston Villa for £50m to sell (the negotiation never took off), agreed to send him on loan and therefore the doors were opened for his landing in Milan.
It is a €2m fixed loan fee plus €2.5m in bonuses linked to qualification for the Champions League and potentially winning a trophy. The is no option to buy, because the Portuguese was cost €52m last summer and so negotiating a buy-out figure would have slowed things down.
Milan have guaranteed his salary until June, i.e. €2m net plus bonuses. The Joao Felix operation demonstrates how much the owners care about finishing the current season on a high note, and Conceicao was key.
Arrival and medical
Joao Felix arrived last night at 10pm at Malpensa’s private flights airport, with his father Carlos Sequeira. The Portuguese immediately headed to Casa Milan to sign the contract until June, where Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Giorgio Furlani and Geoffrey Moncada were waiting for him.
Then he went to the Melia hotel, his first Milanese ‘home’. This morning he will undergo medical examinations and then go to train at Milanello. In fact, Conceiçao has moved the training scheduled for the morning to the afternoon, so he could play against Roma tomorrow night.
By midnight today, the Rossoneri will have to deliver the new list of 25 players for the league and Felix will take the place of Noah Okafor, who joined Napoli on loan.

The push and the phone call
Fundamental to Joao Felix’s arrival at Milanello, in addition to the presence of Conceiçao, was the pressure of his national teammate Rafael Leao who respects him and explained to him how to enjoy life in Milan.
The two are very close, and whether they can compete for a starting shirt at the Rossoneri is another matter. In his career, the only coach who really made the most of Felix was Diego Simeone at Atletico Madrid, the club that paid €120m to land him from Benfica in summer 2019.
Now bringing out the best in him will be up to Conceiçao who has known him for some time and who has great respect for him: the coach and the attacker spoke to each other in recent days and yesterday that evening, as soon as he landed, Joao received another call from his compatriot.
It was a welcome he appreciated. He has taken not Sergio’s requests and is ready for the new challenge. It’s good news for Milan: Felix won’t be coming for a change of scenery and to spend the end of 2024-25 in a new city. He wants to play and be decisive.
I know if i had to make a choice between Milan or Birmingham, there’d only be one winner…
100%
Milan is better, but Birmingham is a wonderful city! And, no I’m not from there 🙂
The league is gone but genuinely I’m excited to the point of declaring Milan CL contenders this year. Sometimes things just work out and slot in to place. If whatever poison was in the group is gone and the mentality to give their best returns we will be a force. When we’re strong we’re very strong and when we’re bad we’re unwatchable. Give us a win in coppa and 9 straight points and get that belief churning.
I hope that Conceição choose Félix for another reason than him being his countryman.
Félix is a player that pretty much everyone who follows football to some degree know or heard about but that doesn’t make him a good player and let’s be honest that failed EVERYWHERE.
He is versatile but his stats are abysmal in every position that he played in and since 2022 he couldn’t stay for more than one season in any club he’s been in.
I guess the good thing is that he is replacing Okafor, so that doesn’t look like a massive loss.
So I REALLY hope Conceição succeeds where everyone else failed.
Not just his compatriot,…. Also the same agents.
Yes, but he will be a Milan player for 6 months. I don’t really care to be honest, if he does good amazing, if not he is 100% out next summer. If there was an option I would think differently, but developing players or getting them back in shape for others. Ridiculous if you ask me.
The only reason he didn’t stay in Barcelona was because he was too expensive. With consistent play time and a dynamic attack like ours, we should see a lot flair and free flowing football.
We don’t have a defensively good midfield. If we did this attack would be fantastic.
With Felix we might however be able to open up tight defenses in Serie A.
Unless Musah takes several leaps forward as a defensive midfielder or Bondo has defensive abilities beyond anyone else we will have problems.
Conceicaos has still not been able to change the way we play beyond occasionally showing up in periods of the game.
There is a lot to do…
Bondo in my opinion, his skills are at its best when he is responsible for winning the ball back and defending the ball. He is not a good forward passer of the ball or a better carrier of the ball like some of his new teammates.
I seriously hope the coach tells Bondo to just do the defensive duties as that would allow Fofana to have less of those tasks so that he can move forward.
I think Bondo has shown enough Serie A experience to do just that.
That is over 10M for Felix 6 months. Not worth if you ask me. If he plays good they won’t let him go for under 55-60M and Milan won’t be able to afford him. They should have to a transfer clause in, one way or the other. And I love how the reason why there isn’t one is because it was last minute, and they were talking about Felix for almost a week.
Nice to finally have a coach that demands Ownership spend $$ to get the players HE wants and not just who is a bargain (ie, Morata)
Now it’s all on Felix. He is at a crossroads in his career. The talent is there to be a star again just has to put it together. I think Italy will be great for him – much much slower and less physical than England so if his head is on right he should thrive.
Hope that is the case and hope he wants to stay so we can lower the demands of Chelsea in summer. It that is a BIG maybe and likely not to happen unless Mendes forces it. We will see but it’s time for this kid to put up or shut up. He’s had enough chances.
They don’t need attackers, they need defenders/midfielders
I hope Milan use 4-2-3-1 formation to win tonight game, walker, Tomori, palv and Theo
Fofana and musa
Felix pulicic and leao and Abraham in front