Tijjani Reijnders is in great form, having scored four goals in his last four games for AC Milan, and the club want to reward him with a renewal.
As Tuttosport (via MilanNews) reports this morning, Reijnders scored a brace against Club Brugge and then netted against Monza and Real Madrid. However, the Dutchman was also one of the most angry and disappointed after the 3-3 draw in Cagliari.
“It’s not possible to concede three goals that are all the same, we have to look at ourselves in the mirror and understand,” he said. He didn’t score against the Sardinians, but he provided a wonderful assist for Rafael Leao’s first goal, and he feels it should have been a winning effort.
It is undeniable that Reijnders is one of the best players in the squad in terms of consistency, alongside Christian Pulisic. His top-level performances are attracting the attention of some top English clubs, including Manchester City.
Milan are in negotiations over renewing the contract of the 26-year-old, as admitted by the father-agent of the former AZ Alkmaar man. The plan is to reward him with a significant increase in his salary from the current €1.7m to €3.5m net per season.
The signature ‘is expected soon’ as per the paper and yet it is still not an absolute guarantee of his long-term stay at Milan for a couple of reasons. The first is linked to player trading: if a huge offer were to arrive (as happened with Sandro Tonali for example) the Rossoneri would listen to it.
The second reason instead concerns the competitiveness of the team itself: without a project that guarantees fighting for trophies, Reijnders – who will turn 27 on July 29 – could go somewhere with more ambition.
Redturd
As much as I’ve been enjoying him finally stepping up and taking control of games, we are still talking early days and the team is not exactly setting the world on fire.
Those nice touches, and even improved runs, passes, assists and goals don’t necessarily show he’s a ‘winner’. He might just join the long list of very talented players to never win anything. Or he could go to Real and become a true great. We just don’t know.
What we do know is that we have a(n ever shrinking) core of players who did win. And not just one Scudetto. A core that produced title winning form for 2 year, that made it to the semi-finals of the champions league, that consistently delivered top 4/top 2 finishes.
The wheels came off around the time that Reijnders joined/other players left. Now that’s very possibly not his fault. But in a process of elimination he can’t be ruled out as being the weakest link.
The midfield performance against Real reminded me of good old days. It looked like him, Fofana and Musah as a combo worked. And if that were to continue working then we’ve finally solved our midfield which would be a personal cause for celebration.
But it’s still early days for the wall to wall worshipping. A club like Milan should not be a club where players are awarded instant hero status.
I know u take alot of flack in the comments but you are correct. If rumours are true, can’t believe we’re looking to sell Tomori for instance. We are and have been reducing our quantity of winners in the team, both in selling our own organic winners and those we bring in. We could have added a backup defender with experience like Hummels or Varane for instance. These guys you don’t really buy to play but for the dressing room and guidance to the younger players on what it takes to win. Ppl still think we brought Ibra in to score goals hah! Winning mentality br.eeds winning. We sold Tonali, Krunic, and Benny is almost like he’s not here as sadly he’s always injured. Didn’t renew Kessie. Sent Kalulu away. Dismantle the core of team one by one and ppl here the ba.lls to think this is somehow better??
And our current midfield are made up of zero winners (Fofana, Deers, Musah for those who want to get technical).
Like you I want to see Deers be more consistent. He can be really good but I’d like to have a player with better defensive skills for a midfielder. He does do everything else very very well though.
Weakest link? Are you completely out of your mind? A team that has the likes of Emerson, Pavlovic, Terracciano… and you say you can’t rule out that Reijnders of all people is the weakest link?
This whole post of yours is just more of your hatred for Reijnders, which you spent many posts and many weeks and months bashing over and over again, up to very recently. Now that he has scored 4 goals in decisive ways and is collecting MOTM performances, you come up with this long post trying to justify your position.
That’s a failure. Don’t be a revisionist.
The much more manly thing to say would have been: “Sorry guys, I was wrong about Reijnders. He is actually a very good player.” No need to add anything else, because that’s the truth, and most people see it except you.
People resist a lot the idea of saying “I was wrong” even when they obviously were. But you were so rabid about Tijjani, that it is kind of the minimum one would expect, that you’d be man enough to acknowledge that you were wrong about him.
And then, is it supposed to be Tijjani’s fault that he hasn’t won titles with Milan? That I know, the sport is played with 11 men, not just 1.
Tijjani has been consistently good. Even before he fixed one of his few shortcomings, that of poor finishing, he was a workhorse who played almost all games and much more often than not had good performances.
But he can’t carry the team on his own when Emerson, Pavolovic, Theo and the likes keep conceding goals to the opponents all over the place, the coach doesn’t seem to have a clue about how to fix the defense, and the managers don’t hire competent defenders.
So, no, it’s not the fault of one of the few players who has actually been consistently very good, that we are not competing for titles.
I’m specifically talking about why our midfield has been overrun for over a year now which is when he arrived.
I don’t obsess over individuals because football is a team sport, and the right combination can make or break players.
In defence of Reijnders he’s only just now been given a DM to play onside and against Real he had two ‘minders’ in Musah and Fofana.
Maybe that’s what we need.
As for the other random signings these have occurred because: a) the club consistently pursues non-winners from weaker leagues; and b) the club obsesses over individuals thinking that swapping out and in a load of individuals will change things. It’s not about individuals but combinations, and most importantly a decent manager.
It’s very difficult to judge any players under Fonseca.
“What we do know is that we have an ever shrinking core of players who did win.”
As a matter of fact, you keep repeating in various posts this claim that we have few players who have won championships, but you’re completely wrong about it. Like I demonstrated in my longer post in response to ACM1899 below, we have no fewer than 19 players in our senior roster who have won several titles, many of them among the most prestigious of the land (including the UCL, the UEFA Euro, the FIFA Club World Cup, and the national championships of all 5 top European leagues, as well as several other less prestigious titles but even those are not just some bush league in Venezuela or Liechtenstein). The ONLY 4 players in our current senior roster who haven’t won anything are Emerson Royal, Sportiello, Reijnders, and Terracciano. All others have at least one, and most have multiple titles, some of them very prestigious, indeed.
You are talking out of your impression rather than out of hard data.
If they sell tijji that’s the final conformation of what we already know. That id**ts are running the club
You gotta build around him not sell if you want some semblance of a competitive team
Reijnders is growing into the potential that is clear as day to see. That’s fantastic. He’s not quite the world beater yet – I would want to see him performing in his current form consistently for multiple season.
The flip side is that when that happens, he is as good as gone, unless Milan put together an ambitious project capable of challenging for serious trophies.
Currently this is a cup team. We show up for individual high pressure games, but we lack the consistent performances to transform us into a title challenger.
We don’t have any champions in this roster either. We have some excellent players, some good players and a bunch of average ones that “average” us into a cup team.
We need a Coach to shape this team and elevate the current crop of players into champions to consistently perform against the minnows like we perform on the big stage.
We need Milan to look more like Milan and not a mid table cup team.
You are almost right in everything you’ve said, as usual.
However, you shouldn’t say we don’t have any champions in this roster.
Pulisic has won the UCL and the FIFA Club World Cup with Chelsea (due to the latter, Christian is actually a World Champion) among other titles.
Morata has won the UCL twice and the FIFA Club World Cup once with Real Madrid, and the UEFA Euro with Spain’s national team, among other titles. Again, that’s a World Champion.
We have another World Champion in Theo Hernandez who also won the FIFA Club World Cup with Real, as well as the UCL, the UEFA Super Cup, the UEFA Nations League, and while not the champ, he was runner-up of the FIFA World Cup (so was Fofana; getting to a FIFA World Cup Final even if you don’t win it, to me qualifies as being a champ).
And these are just the most relevant ones. Several others have won championships:
Mike Maignan, Serie A, League 1, and UEFA Nations League.
Rafael Leão, Serie A (and its MVP), and UEFA U17.
Chuk, UEFA Nations League and FIFA U17 World Cup.
Abraham, UCL, UEFA Super Cup, UEFA Conference League
Tomori, Serie A, FIFA U20 World Cup
RLC, EPL, UEFA Europa League, UEFA Super Cup
Bennacer, Serie A, Africa Cup of Nations
Okafor, Austrian Bundesliga 4 times, Austrian Cup 4 times, Swiss Cup
Jovic, Serbian SuperLiga, Portuguese Primeira Liga, La LIga twice, UCL once
Florenzi, UEFA Euro, UEFA Euro U21, Serie A, Coupe de France
Thiaw, German Bundesliga
Pavlovic, Serbian Cup, Austrian Bundesliga
Musah, CONCACAF Nations League 3 times
Calabria, Serie A.
Gabbia, Serie A.
The only players in our current first team roster who haven’t won anything are Emerson Royal, Filippo Terracciano, and Marco Sportiello.
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In summary, almost everybody in our roster won at least one championship; some very prestigious, some less so.
Among the prestigious ones, we have 5 UEFA Champions League winners, 3 FIFA World Cup winners, 2 senior UEFA Euro winners, and for the top 5 leagues in Europe, various La Liga, German Bundesliga, EPL, League 1 and Serie A winners; also 2 FIFA World Cup runner-ups.
Among the least prestigious ones, but still these players were champions, we have the Europa League, the Conference league, the African Cup of Nations, the CONCACAF Nations League, the national leagues in Serbia, Portugal, and Austria, and various other international and national cups, as well as youth European and World championships.
So, come again? No champions?
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As a matter of fact, one wonders if the problem is not our coach, given the high number of players with prestigious and not as prestigious championships (but not horrible either; it’s not like these are championships in Andorra or Liechtenstein or Venezuela).
When you have a roster full of UCL winners, Club World Cup winners, UEFA Euro winners, winners of the top 5 European leagues, and various other assorted winners, but your club is still a mid-table team, maybe it’s the coach who can’t elevate these otherwise quite decent players above the mid-table level.
Look at the other midtable teams: most of them don’t have a single champion there. We literally have 19. When there is an international break, we get like 12 to 15 players who are playing for their national teams at any given break.
And we can’t get any better than mid-table in Serie A???
That’s on the coach.
Correction: Tijjani Reijnders should also be added to the 3 players who haven’t won a title yet. I forgot about him. Not that he doesn’t deserve one, but he’s been unlucky in the fact that he plays for a national team that hasn’t won anything in the last several decades.
That’s a phenomenon that some unfortunate players have had. George Best, for example, was one of the best footballers the world has ever seen. But because he was unlucky enough to be born in Northern Ireland, he never won anything international with his national team. He did win the precursor of the EPL, the Football League First Division twice, and also won the precursor of the UCL once, which at the time was called the European Cup.
The Netherlands always get close but then don’t win anything, otherwise Reijnders who has played very well for them, could have had a title.
Club-wise, Tijjani was also unlucky to have only played for one lousy team before he came to Milan: AZ Alkmaar. With them, he at least did reach the semis of the Conference League. He never played for any other club.
So, I find his lack of titles more understandable.
I don’t mean champions as in what trophies they won. I mean champions in the sense of their attitude and mental strength. When in difficult times, when the team is underperforming they put the team on their shoulders and bulldoze on.
Many of our players are psychologically frail. Look at Theo, Leao for example. So easy to derail them. At the first sign of struggle they melt. Look at Theo’s form. Look at Leao’s form up until now. So many ups and downs and inconsistent performances.
We have a lot of potential in several players like Puli and Reijnders. Their attitude and work rate is commendable. Other players are still new and need more time but so many others are just plain average -poor.
And ultimately the coach who hasn’t been improve us defensively or elevate our potential and amplify our abilities…
The team has been constructed without a vision, just based on resale potential and unfortunately it shows. Especially our back line – individual CB’s. No team defending outside of the Madrid and Inter games.
This is what Maldini was trying to do – bring in established champions to lift the team psychologically to that level. The Conte effect basically.
OK, I understand now what you were getting at, and I agree.
We have a number of players who have done well elsewhere. A good coach should make the whole be bigger than the sum of the parts. With AC Milan under Fonseca, it’s the opposite. You get several players who have won the UCL, the FIFA Club World Cup, the top leagues, etc., and they don’t perform together as a team, and the team is much inferior to the list on paper of its prestigious roster.
Again, that’s on the coach. A coach does matter. Just look at Napoli under Spalletti, Napoli under Garcia, and now Napoli under Conte. They had little roster change, actually lost an essential player, but they are back to a high level because they actually have a competent coach. We don’t.