The end of an era for the Rossoneri team.
– For once, let’s start from the conclusions: Is it currently feasible for a Serie A team to give up a capital gain of (approximately) 70 million euros accrued with a single player? The answer, in 99% of cases, will be very simple: NO. Unfortunately for Milan, or rather for their fans, Sandro Tonali does not fall within that 1% exception despite being a player at the center of the project both from a technical and tactical point of view, not to mention the importance of him at locker room level. The question that should be asked in these cases, therefore, is another: why has Italian football been reduced to being a step of transition to something superior? The answer lies in the inadequacy of the leaders of our football, who prefer to reflect themselves behind ephemeral and semi-random results such as the finals of the European cups (all lost), rather than look each other in the face and find the courage to admit their failure;
– Having said that, it is right to ask questions relating to the specific situation, because the players go on the pitch and not the capital gains. With Bennacer’s injury, which will return in the best of cases in January, if not in the spring, and the sale of Tonali, Milan will face next season without the starting midfield of the Pioli era (also considering the farewell of Kessié, pivot of the Scudetto, last summer) and, in fact, he will have to start again from the names of Pobega and Krunic. We are talking about two good players, useful for the project, alongside whom three more will have to be bought to have a numerically reliable and competitive line, also given the renunciation of Vranckx, not very understandable in the eyes of the writer;
– The names proposed by the radio market as replacements for the ex-future captain (paradox) of the Rossoneri are of a high level and range from Frattesia youngster on the launch pad for Giuseppe Riso’s “stable” (the same as Tonali, which could give Milan an advantage), so they have to beat the competition from Inter, up to Sergej Milinkovic-Savic: best midfielder in Serie A together with Barella, ready to take flight in a so-called “big” after years at Lazio. “All very nice”, said Pizzul, but even assuming and (not) granted that both arrive, perhaps together with another future player, we are talking about a team to be totally refounded in its key department, after a season that was anything but simple and with about a month and a half from the start of the rally to that of the championship;
– To make matters worse, Tonali’s name wasn’t the only one noted in the notebooks of the European “big names”., with Theo Hernandez tempted by Atletico Madrid and Maignan already in the crosshairs of the very rich Chelsea, only Leao (already, he, the one accused of little attachment to the shirt and indolence) has taken shelter from foreign sirens by signing a long renewal and swearing love to the team that allowed him to fly. A situation that recalls the ghosts of 2012, when the sales of Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Thiago Silva started the so-called “Banter Era”, ten-year avenue of sunset of the glorious era of Silvio Berlusconi, whose recent departure sounds more than ever like a tragic coincidence who draws a line between the present and the past of Milan;
– Now more than ever, Rossoneri fans are forced to ask themselves about the future and what Gerry Cardinale’s project is for their favorite team. With the dismissal of Maldini, the sale of Tonali and the farewell to Zlatan Ibrahimovic, the owner of RedBird made a clean break with the past, totally depriving the locker room of that “Milanism” and sense of belonging that had been the key to the last championship, with all due respect to poor Calabria. Regardless of the economic aspects and the investments that will be made on the market, the real doubt is how an American property, light years away from the Italian way of conceiving football, will try to restore an identity and a winning mentality to a team whose fans they have long been accustomed to fighting for the best results and not simply to float in the upper areas of the standings and make money: two things that are now inseparable in modern football. This year, the company was good at “deceiving them”, waiting for the end of the first refusal on season tickets before making the outgoing market, but in certain squares the jokers run out quickly and, if the right cards do not come out of the deck, overturning the table will be a matter of a moment.