How two superstars have been the catalysts of the recent downfall of AC Milan
Earlier this week, AC Milan embarrassingly crashed out of the UEFA Champions League after drawing 1-1 against an injury ridden Feyenoord side currently sitting 4th in the Eredivisie, 14 points off top spot after they had just sacked their coach and coincidentally sold their best player Santiago Giminez, to AC Milan.
This signifies a new rock-bottom for the Rossoneri who have been on a downward spiral for a couple of years now. They had to win this game, there’s no other way to put it. No other outcome dared to be considered.
And yet they managed to mess it up.
The harsh truth is that the club is a circus right now. They sacked Paulo Fonseca and replaced him with highly rated Porto coach Sergio Conceicao and followed that up with spending heavily on players such as Joao Felix, Santiago Gimenez and Kyle Walker in January to try and improve a expensively-assembled yet average squad of footballers. A damning indictment of the current state of affairs at the club is that many people who follow Milan will tell you that they aren’t surprised to see them crash out of the competition in this manner.
Currently sitting 7th in the Serie A, Milan are faced with a difficult question in the summer. Do we completely restart this project? To me, the answer is a definite yes. AC Milan have made a catalogue of mistakes in the past few years in regards to how they have built their squad. And in my opinion the biggest mistake is that they have built their squad around 2 players, Theo Hernandez and Rafael Leao. Both are universally regarded as some of the best in the world in their position yet, if we are being honest, they are a far cry from that. They haven’t been at that level for at least 2 seasons now and mask consistent below-average performances with brilliant showings of their talent once every 10 games. They are treated around the club as if they are untouchable and in return their egos have been fed to a point where they view themselves as luxury players. Almost as if the rules of running and working hard for your team do not apply to them
The most recent game against Feyenoord showcases my point exactly. Milan were 1-0 up and so Hernandez decided to get himself sent off after he received two completely unavoidable yellow cards, the latter of which was for one of the worst dives you will ever see. Milan quickly conceded and the rest of the game saw the players constantly shuttling the ball out to Leao but they were met with a disappointing outcome every time through his wayward and overhit crosses or his hopeless dribbles that saw him being easily tackled almost every time.
Milan’s two star men are not the players the club thought they would be when they offered them lucrative contracts years prior. Now they are earning huge sums of money without doing anything on the pitch to show they deserve it and ultimately the Rossoneri are paying the price. Pair this with some very poor recruitment in the last two or three years which can be exemplified by their decision to sign Emerson Royal from Spurs and it is easy to see why they are where they are right now.
AC Milan need to hit the restart button. Fonseca tried it but he paid the price. You can’t build a squad around inconsistent players. Consistency is one of the most valuable traits a footballer can have yet Milan seem to disregard this fact with their relentless persistence with many of the top earners in the squad. The club needs to tear down its foundation, clear out the deadwood, and rebuild with fresh roots if it ever wants to grow and this starts with their supposedly two best players.
Elite Italian clubs such as Inter, Napoli and Juventus are beginning to leave 7-time Champions League winners behind and if the club don’t act soon to rectify this, their status as one of the biggest footballing institutions in the world will soon be a thing of the past and AC Milan will be destined for nothing but hopeless mediocrity in their near future.
