It wasn’t the first time AC Milan fans staged a protest, and it likely won’t be the last.
Cast your mind back 15 years ago and Milan fans standing underneath the window of a certain Brazilian playmaker who was deliberating over a mega-money move. In January 2009 Man City had made an outrageous offer to Milan for Kaka, believed to be in the figure of $128 million. Milan had accepted the offer due to climbing debt, yet Kaka wasn’t sold on the move. To persuade the player to stay, Milan fans rallied and stood outside his apartment complex chanting his name in a show of appreciation. In the end, Kaka stayed — at least for another six months — and eventually joined Real Madrid in the summer of 2009. But their protest had won the day, leading to Garry Cook’s infamous ‘bottling it’ line that now lives in immortality.
Over the past week the Rossoneri faithful waged another protest, this one online, against the club in order to stop Spanish coach Julen Lopetegui replacing Stefano Pioli at the end of the season. It’s been an open secret that Pioli’s cycle at the club is coming to an end after four-and-a-half years at the club. In fact, Pioli is Milan’s longest-serving manager since Carlo Ancelotti left the club 15 years ago after nine years in the job.
Milan need to hire a coach that’ll bring new ideas and a fresh impetus. This season they’ve looked tired and stagnation is apparent. Antonio Conte’s name has been circling around the club all season long, but it appears that the former Juventus and Inter coach could be heading back to Serie A to manage Napoli, if reports are to be believed.
Lopetegui’s name had been thrown into the mix along with the likes of Roberto De Zerbi, Mark van Bommel, Paulo Fonseca and others. De Zerbi aside, it feels like an uninspiring list of potential candidates. Van Bommel is very early into his coaching career and arguably isn’t ready for a club of Milan’s size; Fonseca did a good job at Roma but nothing in his managerial CV suggests he’s good enough for a club like Milan, while Lopeteugi has no experience of coaching in Serie A and his last post was at Wolves.
As reports circulated that Lopetegui was close to signing an agreement to join, fans were in uproar and started a petition to stop the club from signing the Spaniard. Some 10,000 signatures were gathered in less than 48 hours, a statement was made from Milan’s Curva Sud asking the club to show more ambition, and a ‘Nopetegui’ hashtag went viral on X (formely Twitter) over the past week. Fans cited his short run as Real Madrid coach in 2018, a club Milan fancy themselves on equal footing with, as one of the reasons not to hire the 57-year-old, not to mention his last job with Wolves hardly set the pulses racing.
It was reported that Milan owners RedBird were taken off guard by the vociferous response to the potential hiring of Lopetegui and have since pulled back, returning to the drawing board and attempting to identify a new manager. De Zerbi is arguably the pick of the names on the list, but with a release clause of $16 million to free him from Brighton, it remains to be seen if Milan will pay that much for a man who once played for them — briefly — in the mid 1990s.
De Zerbi’s ability to improve young talent and demand an attractive brand of football from his players should appeal to the Milan hierarchy. Moreover, he has the experience in Serie A that most clubs crave and doesn’t kick up too much of a fuss as pertains to transfer demands. Yet RedBird run Milan on a strict financial model and paying $16m to exonerate a coach from his current contract likely doesn’t fit in with their ethos.
Vincenzo Italiano is a coach Milan should be looking at. The current Fiorentina boss, like De Zerbi, values attacking football and his usual 4-3-3 system would get the most out of the current crop of Milan players. Italiano would also be cheaper to sign than De Zerbi and has taken La Viola to one European final and is likely to reach another in a matter of weeks.
With city rivals Inter being so dominant this season, securing the Scudetto in the Derby della Madonnina and winning a second star in the process, Milan fans know the club needs to get the right appointment this summer in order to keep apace with their neighbours and bring in an established coach who is an upgrade on Pioli.
Only time will tell if the club heed the fan’s advice.