I get it. I kind of do. You're disappointed, I know, and it's not just you. I think a lot of people are pained by what AC Milan have become. You spent a lot of money in the summer. A cool €90 million. That's a lot and, naturally, you expected more -- a return to Champions League football, at a minimum, and Milan are nowhere near that.
Your Rossoneri are sixth. They have taken two points from the last 15 available. It's not good, is it? Losing to Juventus for the eighth time in a row must have been a bummer, too. I hear you, Mr. Berlusconi. And so you've decided to sack manager Sinisa Mihajlovic. That didn't take long, did it? You didn't particularly like it when he stood up to you and gave as good as he got, did you? Fancy his telling the press that he doesn't need your permission to pick the team. Did he really think that? Silly Sinisa.
But hold on, B. This decision strikes me as a little rash. If I may say so, your expectations for this season were unrealistic. Remember where Milan finished a year ago? Tenth, a full 35 points behind Juventus and 17 points from the Champions League places. I can't help but think you underestimated the scale of the rebuild. The €90m you spent was very welcome and a refreshing change from the loans and free transfers of the past three years, but you must now think it could have been better spent. It almost all went to Alessio Romagnoli, Andrea Bertolacci -- Andrea Bertolacci?! -- and Carlos Bacca.
The team you gave Mihajlovic was flawed and incomplete. I mean, we're still waiting for you to have a go at replacing Andrea Pirlo. It's been almost five years now. Where is your Miralem Pjanic, your Claudio Marchisio, your Jorginho? In essence, your trusted chief executive Adriano Galliani blew the budget you so generously made available and only added half of what was needed. So it shouldn't really come as a surprise that Mihajlovic has found the job a challenge.
Carlo Ancelotti didn't want the position in the summer. He turned you down because he needed a back operation and wanted to take a sabbatical but, let's face it, Carlo knew better than to get involved in this mess. Pep Guardiola said "no" too before choosing Bayern Munich. It speaks volumes about the state of Serie A but, more specifically, the perception of your club as among the elite, that blue-chip managers no longer aspire to work at Milan. There's a toxicity to the club now that is making even lower-profile managers think twice about taking your calls.
They look at the treatment Leonardo, Massimiliano Allegri, Clarence Seedorf and Pippo Inzaghi received and think: "Is it really worth the hassle?" Allegri ended a seven-year wait for the Scudetto and was told he didn't understand football. Last season he almost did the Treble with Juventus and is coach of the year again
I hope you don't mind me saying this, but you do seem to have rushed to judgement on Sinisa awfully quickly. You lost in Florence on opening night. Defeat in the derby soon followed. Inter were making you look bad, I know. They won their first five games in a row. Your enthusiasm soon evaporated. But when Mihajlovic began to figure things out and start making progress, did you really have to undermine rather than support him?
You complimented Sassuolo even when they lost to Milan. You went into the away dressing room to congratulate Atalanta on getting a point. I mean, come on, Sil. That's bad form. It created an atmosphere that made Mihajlovic's job more difficult and exacerbated existing problems. You know how traumatised the players have been by the turbulent last couple of years at Milan. Mihajlovic told you they needed an exorcist. They didn't need the pressure of playing almost every game as if it were their manager's last.
They didn't share your opinion, either. Your players bought into Mihajlovic. Even when times were hard, they stood by him. They believed he was the right man for the job. He gave a 16-year-old Gianluigi Donnarumma his debut. Now he's your No. 1 for the next two decades. The 4-4-2 he settled on was solid rather than spectacular but, you have to admit, it did bring consistency. You went unbeaten for nine games, which hasn't happened since Allegri was in the dugout. Mihajlovic got Keisuke Honda playing the best football of his Milan career. M'Baye Niang, once a lost cause, became fundamental, and only Gonzalo Higuain has scored more goals in Serie A than Bacca.
You performed well away to Roma and particularly Napoli, claimed victory over Fiorentina and beat Inter 3-0, your biggest win in the derby in almost five years. You're back in the Coppa Italia final for the first time since 2003. Lift the cup, and you're back into Europe. Lose it but still finish where you are now and you qualify for Europe. Although Saturday's final dress rehearsal against Juventus ended in defeat, you performed well enough to make you think you have a chance against them in May. Gianluigi Buffon was man of the match and had to be at his world-class best to stop you from getting anything from that game.
And yet, B, you've lost patience and seen enough. Never in your 30 years at the helm of Milan have you made five coaching changes in three years. Only Palermo have made more in that timeframe. For all your interference, the club was always quite stable before Ancelotti left for Chelsea. But not anymore, and is it any wonder? What did you expect after repeatedly giving the job to rookie coaches like Leonardo, Seedorf, Inzaghi and now Cristian Brocchi? All were thrown in at the deep end in a delicate transition period of cuts and austerity and you expected them to have the same success as Fabio Capello did when he was promoted from within in 1991. The problem is, I don't see any Paolo Maldinis and Alessandro Costacurtas, Frank Rijkaards and Marco van Bastens.
You want Brocchi to bring the kids through, and I hear there are some promising ones, like Manuel Locatelli. Only the other day I heard Galliani saying how 37 of your academy players are youth internationals. You want a young Italian team and believe Brocchi can blood them at senior level. But didn't you express the same hope when you gave Inzaghi the job? Are you not repeating the same mistake? And how can we be sure you won't cash in on Donnarumma? No sooner did Stephan El Shaarawy break through than you tried to flog him to Anzhi Makhachkala. Riccardo Saponara is the No. 10 you want, but he'll likely be at Juve next season.
It's so short-term-oriented, so predictable.
The lack of ideas at Milan is worrying. If it's not this, it's going back to the future and attempting to bring back Ancelotti and Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Kevin Prince-Boateng and, before that, Kaka. Confusion reigns. What happened to selling a 48 percent stake in the club to Bee Taechaubol? How come you put so much time and effort into planning for a new ground only to decide to stay at San Siro? You must realise all this is a big turnoff for managers? Asked about the speculation linking him to the job, Sassuolo coach Eusebio di Francesco, one of Italy's brightest coaching talents, said: "I will not go where there is confusion." Does that not worry you, B?
When Leonardo resigned, he compared you to Narcissus. "He didn't like anything other than what was in the mirror," Leo said. Next time you catch yourself in the looking glass, be honest with yourself and examine the flaws in the running of your club. This team still wears red and black. They call themselves Milan and play at San Siro. But they are not Milan as we know them, and they haven't been for a long time.
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