There is a lot of talk about AC Milan investing in a new striker, but Santiago Gimenez simply cannot become an afterthought for many reasons.
As a reminder, Gimenez was the big signing of the winter mercato as the Rossoneri paid €32m plus €3m in bonuses to snatch him from Feyenoord. Despite scoring six goals and adding three assists in a pretty dysfunctional side, there have been several rumours that he could actually leave.
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The reason for this is that Igli Tare has already announced Milan’s plan to invest in another striker. So, even if the Mexican does remain at the club, it feels very likely that he is going to be relegated to a back-up role, especially in a season without any European competitions.
However, if the Rossoneri management were to effectively cast aside Gimenez just six months after making such a large investment, it should set off big red flashing warning signs for everyone.
Mitigating circumstances
There’s no doubt that even in football things can be rushed, and with a big price tag comes big expectations. This is especially true for attacking players, because the amount paid can be directly compared against their output in terms of goals and assists.
A recent example is Charles De Ketelaere, who arrived at Milan amid legitimate excitement and ended up in the dock at the end of the season. What happened after is the first precedent of note: Atalanta took him on board, and Gian Piero Gasperini turned him into the player Paolo Maldini and co. thought they were getting.
Any player that joins any club has a better chance of succeeding from day one if the environmental conditions are correct, i.e. if there is stability within the club, confidence within the squad and a feeling of togetherness.
It is the exact opposite of what happened to the Rossoneri in the first half of 2025, and thus the situation that Gimenez walked into. When the winter mercato rolled around, the management were trying to undo the mistakes of the summer, as shown by the five signings and six outgoings.
This chaos didn’t seem to deter the 24-year-old who instead pushed for the move, showing the self-belief that he could contribute to the resurgence of a team in crisis. That doesn’t change the fact that he was enrolling in the worst possible conditions to offer his best.
The change in head coach from Paulo Fonseca to Sergio Conceicao had happened just a few weeks prior, and the switch from one former Porto boss to another led to a defence-first philosophy. This was shown by moves such as the three-man defence.
Simply put, joining a team for a big fee mid-season is difficult enough as it is, let alone one languishing in mid-table with a new coach for everyone to get used to, half the squad having been altered and with fan anger the growing sentiment.
Despite this, Gimenez started quite well: four goal contributions in his first four games (three goals, one assist) had everyone feeling that ‘El Bebote’ might actually be the one to fire Milan out of a mess.
Sadly, even Santi couldn’t escape the quicksand. A goal drought then began, the team’s struggles only magnified the scrutiny and by the end of the campaign protests were more frequent than wins to celebrate.
Missed opportunities and a potential misprofiling
By mid-April, the numbers demonstrated that Gimenez had lost his initial burst of adrenaline-fuelled confidence. The Mexican had 7.7 touches in the opponent’s area in the first part of the 2024-25 season, when he was at Feyenoord. That had practically halved since he arrived at Milan to 4.4.
The shots towards the goal and the chances created had decreased (from 1 to 0.4), while the passes had increased: in the Netherlands he had an average of 7.6 per game, with the Rossoneri it was just under 10. It showed he was dropping deeper – often too deep, more on that to come.
The goals go without saying: 16 in 19 games in the first few months at Feyenoord, one every 75 minutes of play. At Milan, once the curtain came down, he had managed six goals and three assists in 19 games.
A brace off the bench against Bologna off the bench in the Serie A fixture to spark a 3-1 comeback win meant all signs pointed Gimenez being given the nod a few days later in the Coppa Italia final against the same opponent.
He wasn’t, and this was when ‘teething problems’ became something a bit more worrying. A €35m striker signed to score the big goals and win the big games was cast aside for Luka Jovic who, granted, had single-handedly won the semi-final against Inter, but was destined to leave on a free transfer after arriving on one.
Conceicao probably got that one wrong in the end. In cup finals, especially for two sides looking to save a season, it was always going to be scrappy and cagey. Chances were at a premium, so it times like that you need your best finisher. Jovic’s missed chance early on from close range is an emblematic postcard from sad night.
A new era was brought in with Igli Tare and Massimiliano Allegri, yet nothing that the sporting director said in his first press conference will have given the former Feyenoord man much hope that he will be the focal point to build the team around.
“We plan to intervene on the wingers in the event of any exits. As for the centre-forward, we are looking for another player to compete with Gimenez, who I consider an excellent player but who has had a normal Italian impact, of settling in, from a very different football like Dutch football.
“For the role of the striker, also speaking with Zlatan, this team lacks a characteristic: having Gimenez who likes to drift to the wing and then cut inside, the team lacks a centre-forward who stays in the area and who is very good at holding the ball up, who makes the team push up, especially if he stays inside the area.”
Tare made two things pretty clear: 1) The club would invest in a new striker, and 2) They want a penalty area poacher. Last summer, the decision was made to go for a completely different profile in Alvaro Morata, who has been labelled as a ‘9.5’ because of his propensity to drop deep and participate in the build-up.
Looking at how Gimenez has scored his goals – both for Feyenoord and for Milan so far – a theme emerges. He runs off the last shoulder, he finds pockets of space inside the box, he thrives on loose balls and he will put away and decent service. Is this not a penalty area poaches?
Perhaps what Tare meant is someone more physical who can offer a different solution against the low block, and admittedly there were times last season where Santiago was isolated. There were also times where he offered the dynamism to change games, so it is a ‘horses for courses’ situation.
It was this isolation and lack of service that led to Gimenez coming away from the 18-yard box and moving wide, deep or both. That is not where he thrives nor where he wants to operate, so the priority has to be getting his strengths into the game rather than branding him as something he is not.
Reasons for encouragement
The fate of Gimenez largely rests in Allegri’s hands, and there are some positive indications. First of all, there are similarities between him and Dusan Vlahovic. Both are left-footed, both are known for operating as lone strikers and both attack the space in behind.
Their relationship was not always perfect, be that for tactical or personality reasons, but in Allegri’s last year in Turin the ex-Fiorentina man finished with 18 goals in 38 games. It included the decisive goal in a Coppa Italia final, a 1-0 win where chances were at a premium. Sound familiar?
It was a respectable haul for the Serbian, better than the one without Allegri in the season just ended (15 goals in 41 competitive games). However, there is probably more that separates Dusan from Santi than what unites them, especially in physical aspects.
With Allegri on the bench, Milan will likely have a more vertical game, oriented towards exploiting fast transitions. In this context, Gimenez could do very well, because he attacks the space in behind continuously and fights to protect the ball, to let his team-mates push up.
Put it this way, if Milan were to go out and buy a striker for less than €40m who had 45 goals in 73 league games at his previous club, plus 13 in 20 appearances in European competitions, that would sound and feel like good business.
Those, of course, are Gimenez’s numbers with Feyenoord. It’s food for thought, and further fuel must come from the fact that he will get near enough a full preseason with the rest of the squad and the new coach, so can better assimilate the instructions after a six-month apprenticeship.
Think about the message it would send too, to give up on a player after just a few months. Francesco Camarda would naturally have question marks about the path forged out for him and how much time he will be afforded, while new signings might look and think twice about joining.
We end with the sentiments of the player himself, who was finally given the chance to respond to all of the speculation coming from Italy regarding his future and his place with the Rossoneri.
“I feel at home in Milan, I’m living a dream, I thank God for giving me the chance to be in such a big team as Milan,” he said before the Gold Cup final, won by Mexico against the United States.
“I think there were a lot of rumours that I could leave, but I’m very happy there. I spoke with the management, with the coaching staff, and the idea is that I stay. I will try to show my best version, because I don’t want to waste an opportunity like this.”
To us, that sounds like a striker who is very much still fired up and wants to repay the investment, both economically and in terms of trust. There is no desire to give up and seek refuge elsewhere, only the desire to rewrite a script that has wronged him so far.
Can summarise this as hes the only striker in the squad. If we give up on him then we will have zero centre forwards.
Thats all, case closed.
They never said they are giving up on him, they are only looking for competition for him, which is normal for a top club like Milan.
Napoli just win the league with Lukaku, yet they are in search for another striker, that doesn’t mean they have given up on him, in fact that’s how to build a formidable team.
Theo and Leao played continuously even when playing poorly, we couldn’t truly replace them during the season because there was no competition for them, so they could hold the team ransom.
He’s considered the 2nd best striker in Mexico.
whatever that means. 😉
but he should get a chance after a vacation/re-charging period, on a more united Milan team.
I don’t think we will. We are looking for an additional striker because Jovic left.
Lovely media work here by his agents, but you can’t help but agree with these very valid points. If a striker should arrive, it shouldn’t be to replace Santi but to complement him. Give the boy a chance!
For a striker, the only thing that is relevant is how many minutes he scores, not how many games. The coach can introduce him for 10 games in the 85th minute and what? He had one goal in 10 matches or a goal in 90 minutes that he spent on the field.
I don’t really get our obsession with chasing an expensive striker this summer.
If we’d invested a lot in midfield and full backs and gone into the season with Gimenez, Camarda and Jovic I’d have been perfectly happy.
Instead we seem to be chasing cheaper full backs, let go of two decent players for no income and look to be desperate to replace the guy we spent a fortune on a few months ago with a very expensive but obviously flawed player (that could go for any of the three or four targets)
“I don’t really get our obsession with chasing an expensive striker this summer.”
It would be OK if they had already bought a new LB, RB and another midfielder and still had the money to splash out 100M€. But they don’t, now do they?
This management fell for the hype like idiots. What else is new? Now they’re stuck with a 35ML purchase depreciating in value that isn’t even a professional athlete and does NOTHING for the team. Just cherry picks and needs the game to be open to find his space. Otherwise if he is actually marked, like Mancini did to him, he flips out and gets a red card and can do NOTHING against the defense. Horrible signing.
He’s a likeable guy, but hasn’t convinced. He’s consistently a sub on an average Mexican national team. People complain he doesn’t get service. Does he really create enough breaks to get himself open so others can give him service?
“Think about the message it would send too, to give up on a player after just a few months.”
Yea we did this just 6 months prior to his arrival. That notion is well known that we are capable of tossing players aside that dont perform instantly. Look at Morata…sent away after 6 months. Emerson was “lucky” to have gotten injured or else he would have also been tossed. Plus we banish players to the realm of the Futuro. So we’ve been sending the wrong messages. The real devil’s advocate would be to keep Giminez in order to send the message that we value what we’re getting even after just 6 months.
PS Giminez has the highest per 90 goals ratio in our team last year, no matter how you slice it that’s very good. That would have put him as fourth top scorer in Serie A, extrapolated ofc
What I don’t understand is not the need for another striker but the need for an expensive one
This article reads like a story someone is making up in their own head. Every club on planet earth has more than one striker! And so what if Gimenez ends up being backup? He knows what coming to Milan means. competition! and not playing every match!
They are very right in their assessment. If he has space to switch to left foot and hit hard then he scores. Other than that he is not that good. He is 100% not a poacher. Some of his goals look great but he chooses more difficult solution instead just using is right foot. If we play against EPL team it is too easy to mark him and he doesn’t play well back to the goal to make space for others.
The problem with Giminez is that he’s not a CF in Italy. He is a striker who can play in a front pair and that’s it. Conceciao saw it and Allegri already sees it. Anyone who actually watched him play before spending money on him would have seen it.
It’s why Milan needs to cut its losses because it makes no sense to have a change option from the bench that costs €32m. It was the most absurd signing, to break the bank on a player who is an upgrade on Jovic, to be present to score poachers goals.
Milan’s strength is its wingers. If that is to continue to be Milan’s strength, and all indications are that Allegri intends it to be so, Milan needs a physical striker for his hold-up play (i.e. to replace Zlatan and what Giroud was in his first 2 seasons with Milan) or he will need a really good defensive player off the ball like Darwin Nunez. There is no third option and no space for Giminez as anything other than an option for a change off the bench.
It’s not a matter of giving Giminez more time to acclimatize. What we would be giving Giminez time to do is to see if he can become a player he is not. You don’t spend €32m on a 24 year old to then try to turn him into something he is not. We’ve seen this play out with CDK at Atalanta when he has struggled in a team that has not had a strong CF to play off. He, too, was not tactically and technically suited to any of the roles Milan asked of him.
It’s not the fault of the player who was signed to be something he is not. Giminez is not the flop. The flops are the people who signed him.
First, in Feyenoord he played as the only striker and was excellent. Scored by City Bayern. If I say that he brought us 5 direct points. Against Verona and Bologna. He scored a goal every 135 minutes and had 2 assists. Who is better in the first season in such a diverse Milan? Give him balls and he will play. Give him to Roma and Gasperini will make a beast out of him. What are you talking about mate?
The objective of a CF has been about more than scoring goals for at least 25 years.
Look at it this way, the system of wingers has added a third attacker to the conventional attacking formation from the preceding 30 years. Obviously, the requirements on the CF would change because defense has been no less of a focus. But fans and pundits refuse to acknowledge the change in role. This represents a more global change but there are also Italy specific requirements, mainly in terms of the quality of hold up play that is expected.
If the change in role wasn’t the case, why would Milan have looked for someone instead of just promoting Jovic? He has a good scoring record, too. Go back far enough in his history and you will see he had great seasons, too, just like Giminez. And then he became a ‘flop’. But he’s not a flop, he has always been the same player. He didn’t become less able to sniff out a goal. The tactical requirements of his role have change based on the club and the league.
You might ask why so much money is wasted on forwards who can’t play the role coaches want / need them to play. I would join you in asking that question. Intelligence is not the word you’d associate with Milan’s off-field operation over the last few seasons, is it?
We saw that Jovic is not a diminished player when he played alongside Giroud, as Milan chased games last season. His record off the bench was prolific, because that allowed him to play in his natural role. But when he started and when he starts for Milan he is a ghost on the field.
It’s exactly the same thing with Giminez. He has neither the natural physicality nor the technique to hold the ball up to participate to the required level in Serie A (and its increased tactical sophistication and physicality). Scoring tap-ins is irrelevant. Allegri can work out the average time it takes Giminez to score a tap-in, too. There are at least 2 other wingers and an AM who can time a run into the box to score tap-ins. Maybe even the primary role of the CF in Italy is absorb the pressure of the CBs to create the space required and to enable the attacking side to possess the ball near its own goal. You can see how Milan couldn’t do this last season and that it could only occupy the ball in attacking areas as the opponent sat deep in the second half. There are technical and tactical reasons that Milan had to come from behind in so many games under Conceciao.
There is another way in which the issue can be illustrated: Zlatan and Lukaku. Given your username I’m sure you are familiar with the schooling Zlatan received from Capello at Juventus. Capello told him to bin the trickery insisted that he become a killer in the box and taught him to become a monster at holding the ball up. We also know that Conte strapped Gagliardini (I think it was) to Lukaku for a pre-season to teach Lukaku hold up play. It’s different in Italy.
Whether it is right or wrong, coaches have been telling fans and pundits for a long time now that goal poaching is no longer held in the same esteem. Fans and pundits just haven’t been listening
Spot on.
Even though we were all excited with his signing, I always said that I would have preferred we got Pavlidis, he is more suited to our style of play.
Lucca is the next most suitable striker at this time, I hope we don’t loose out on him.
New striker didn’t mean to relegate someone, its thing to create competition so any player will fight for the spot. And beside that, Santi is the only viable option we got, we need more
I still believe in this guy
I would love to see Leao and Gimenez up front as a striking pair, who help in the flanks when we’re moving the ball sideways. But that’s just not Allegri ball. Coach wants a giant who stays in the box. Probably the Nigerian striker who was top scorer of the Belgian league is the one who bests fit the bill, considering our usual price ranges.