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AC Milan: The Fall of Italian Giants
Blogs

AC Milan: The Fall of Italian Giants

AC Milan: The Fall of Italian Giants

The Italian Serie A has been one of the truly entertaining top flight leagues of the 2024/25 season. It has had a bit of everything; big dogs fighting neck and neck at the top of the table, resurgent sides eager to redeem slow starts, and last season's underdogs delivering on promise shown last season.

But arguably the main talking point in the Italian top flight has been the performance, or rather lack of it, of AC Milan. Despite a victorious Supercoppa campaign, it has been a sobering season for one of Italy’s most historic outfits. Their weekend defeat to Atalanta left them sitting ninth, and at risk of missing out on European football altogether with just five rounds of games remaining.

The last time AC Milan failed to qualify for any tier of European competition was back 2015/16, when they finished the campaign seventh. Even so, had the Europa Conference League existed at the time, Sinisa Mihajlovic’s side would have made the cut into the competition, and given the talent in their squad at the time, would very likely have gone on to win it.

This season, almost a decade later, has seen the first serious and sustained plummet since, with coach Sergio Conceicao unable to coax any sort of consistency from his side. The absence of big wins and a steady stream of points has hurt them, most of all in the league.

So how did we get here? Why have last year’s runners-up nosedived so suddenly into mid-table mediocrity? And what can be done to revive their form?

AC Milan’s Squad

At a base level, every slump at any club starts with the squad. Certainly, AC Milan’s team has no shortage of talent, but when compared to previous iterations of the team, it can barely hold a candle to its predecessors.

Everyone remembers the Milan team of the early 2010’s; Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Alexandre Pato, Ronaldinho and Robinho in attack; Andrea Pirlo, Clarence Seedorf and Grenaro Gattuso backing them up in midfield; even their defence was star-studded, with Alessandro Nesta, Thiago Silva and Gianlucca Zambrotta posing as a verifiable wall to anyone they faced.

Since those days, AC Milan’s recruitment process seems to have done a U-turn. Gone are the days where they pursue those with star-power and worldly reputation. The 2020’s have instead seen them search for up-and-coming talent, as well as experienced bargain buys that would help mentor their younglings.

This by itself is not a bad approach: Theo Hernandez, Fikayo Tomori, and Rafael Leao are all big names in Italy despite being purchased at a young age, opting to grow with the club. Others, such as former Chelsea winger and Champions League winner Christian Pulisic, have a status that stretches beyond the confines of Italy, thanks to their international history. But in terms of title-winning, ruthless reputation, the squad is severely lacking.

In a time when every side is having to spend more and more to sign the names they want, Milan appear to be resisting. Their biggest outlay this season was a fee of £27 million for Feyenoord’s Santiago Jimenez, who despite tearing it up in the Netherlands, has no prior experience in playing in one of Europe’s top five leagues, and it has shown. Since giving his signature to Milan in January, he has netted three times, and assisted just two more in 14 games. Hardly setting the world on fire.

This was a recurring theme throughout the summer and January transfer windows. After Jimenez, Milan’s biggest signings are Youssouf Fofana from Monaco (£17 million), Strahinja Pavlovic from RB Salzburg (£15), and Emerson Royal from Tottenham (£12 million). Milan’s clear opposition to breaking the £20 million budget significantly restricts their options, and though Fofana, Royal and Pavlovic are all good players in their own right, none of them are worthy of challenging for the Serie A title.

However, it is not solely their signings that have hindered. If football has proved anything in the last few years, it is that outgoings are as, if not more important than who a club brings on.

Milan’s Dodgy Dealings

From what we have seen this season, it would be kind to say that Milan were careless with who they let go over the summer. Let’s start with the highest profile outgoings.

After a goalless first season in red, Charles De Ketelaere was allowed to leave on loan for Atalanta in 2023/24, a move which saw him grow into an outstanding player. He notched 14 goals and 11 assists during his loan stint, and it looked like a sure thing that AC Milan would welcome him back into the fold, and integrate him into the first team once again.

Instead they allowed him to return permanently to Atalanta for the relatively small sum of £21 million pounds, which, considering he is now worth around £35 million after another standout season with title-chasing Atalanta, now seems like an ill-informed decision.

De Ketelaere’s Belgian counterpart, Alexis Saelemakers, provides another example. Brought in as a 19-year-old in 2019, he had a largely unproductive spell in Italy’s second capital, and was allowed to leave for rivals Roma in the summer on a season-long loan. As with De Ketelaere, Saelemakers has thrived upon leaving the Rossoneri, registering his best scoring season to date, and central to Roma’s rampant rise up the league following a poor start.

As if another example was needed, Alvaro Morata was brought in for £11 million in the summer, the solution to the departure of another key player in Olivier Giroud, who had finished as the clubs top scorer in all of their last three campaigns. He scored six goals in 26 games, and then out of nowhere, found himself on the move again, this time on a loan deal to Turkish champions Galatasaray.

Milan’s sales at times boggle the mind, and it is not like this is a recent development. From past seasons, Sandro Tonali, Franck Kessie, Gianliugi Donnarumma, Hakan Calhanoglu and a host of others have been allowed to leave at the peak of their powers, and with the exception of Tonali, all have been allowed to leave for little to no fee.

The lack of income Milan receive from allowing their biggest players to leave in free transfer’s or low-key deals means that they have been increasingly turning to loan deals themselves to fill gaps in their squad, and with little success.

Recent seasons have seen them turn to the likes of Brahim Diaz, Sergiño Dest, Tiemoue Bakayoko, Tammy Abraham and Diogo Dalot in order to plug some of the very obvious holes in their squad, and this campaign has been no different, with two more arriving in January: the fast-tiring Kyle Walker from Man City and an underperforming, promise unfulfilled Joao Felix from Chelsea.

Very few of these loan deals have made any significant impact on how the team plays and subsequent results, and many return to their parent clubs the following season, failing to impress enough to sign permanently.

This has been the crux of the issue for AC Milan: unintelligent in both signings and sales, their stock has fallen rapidly, and with fewer and fewer big money players in and around the first team, it is hard to see where their next big sum is coming from.

But the problem cannot solely be linked to signing and sales - play style has to come into it somewhere.

Do Milan Have an Identity?

At the beginning of the season, then manager Paulo Fonseca promised fans a possession based, dominant style of play that seemed to indicate that they would coast to victory more often than not.

However, instead of tactically tweaking when needed, Fonseca stuck to his one and only gun, the 4-2-3-1 formation that has become so widely used today. With no plan B, opponents often knew how to smother Milan before they even took to the pitch. With such little changing from game to game, a rift began to grow between Fonseca and the fans, who were wondering when, if ever, their manager would be pragmatic and change his approach.

Predictably, this didn’t end up materialising, and was a big factor in Fonseca’s dismissal in December. However, Conceicao’s appointment has seen no further progress. In fact, Milan sit a place below where they were when Fonseca was sacked.

The lack of bounce from a new manager appointment could have been snuffed out for any number of reasons, but to me, the most accurate answer is that the players are no longer motivated.

They seem bored, happy to be second best, and truthfully, it seems as though most of them can’t wait for the summer break, a good time to recalibrate and refresh before having a serious crack at a comeback next season.

Failing to win takes its toll on morale, and combining that with an early exit from the Champions League, it seems that now the players believe there is nothing more to play for, and so they have taken their foot off the gas. Trailing sixth placed Roma by six points, Europe seems a long way off, and despite the fact they can still compete in continental competition next year should they win their remaining games, their performance against Atalanta hinted that the squad believe it is beyond their reach.

What Needs to Change?

Priority number one has to be recruitment. Milan require at least one high-profile name in the summer, a signing which will lift the spirits of the fans and stoke belief in the dressing room that they have enough quality in the squad to actually compete next season.

In truth, it needs to be up front. Despite his loan move looking likely to become permanent, Tammy Abraham’s numbers have been middling at best, while the Alvaro Morata experiment, as discussed above, failed miserably. Even Jimenez, who was a very highly rated striker during his time at Feyenoord, has so far not shown any sign that he will be Milan's next talisman.

The issue has been going on all season, as Milan’s management failed to find a suitable replacement for Olivier Giroud, who despite his advancing age and waning pace, managed to net 49 times in his three seasons at Milan, helping them to their first Serie A title in 11 years in 2022.

But as a more broad statement, Milan need to bolster their squad, with Hernandez at left-back, Mike Maignan in goal, and Pulisic and Rafael Leao on the wings the only safe positions at the moment.

While the overarching story here has been of AC Milan’s fall from supremacy since their title winning season in 2022, there have been bright spots this campaign. Christian Pulisic has been excellent, netting 15 times and assisting on nine occasions from wide positions, while Rafael Leao, despite his inconsistent performances continues to provide excitement. When he is in full flow, his pace, his skills and his finishing are a joy to behold.

But this only emphasizes how much Milan are relying individual’s in order to have a respectable season. At the end of the day, football is a team sport, and unless you are a mid 2010’s Ronaldo or Messi, you cannot carry a team by yourself. Milan need to ensure that their current key players have a high quality of support around them.

If they make the right moves over the summer, there is no reason why they can’t be back in the title race come the end of 2026. But should they make the wrong moves, they will only be compounding past errors, and should they go wrong again, it would take more than a season to recover from.

Benji Kosartiyer
Journalist
Harry Pascoe

Lead Writer

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