AC Milan have not won a match in their first three fixtures of the Serie A season, which were against Torino, Parma, and Lazio. At worst, you’d expect Milan to get at least five points from those matches, none of which were against Champions League contenders.
Meanwhile, Milan were second in Serie A last season, only by virtue of the fact that the league pretty much stunk. Roma, Napoli, and Lazio all took massive steps backwards, while the fact that a Max Allegri-led Juventus were competition in third speaks more, if anything, towards how mediocre Milan were in second.
They finished nearly 20 points behind rivals Inter Milan last season, and the gap between the two rivals in quality could not be any further when comparing Milan’s 2-2 result against Lazio – which should have been a result – and Inter’s 4-0 demolition of a very good Atalanta side.
Paulo Fonseca has already been roundly taken to task for his part in the Milan performances this season, which included a new low against Lazio when he decided to bench his unequivocal two best outfield players, Rafael Leao and Theo Hernandez, in the sort of inane power play only a desperately floundering coach can make.
And much to Fonseca’s embarrassment, they rescued a point for him, with Leao scoring the game-tying goal himself, coming up in the clutch for Milan like he so often has – the MVP of the side that won the Scudetto three years ago yet who has only been disrespected by many since.
Fonseca, who has never won a league title outside of Shakhtar Donetsk, is in himself a problem, but the bigger problem is the machine behind him that decided to hire him.
You know it’s bad when a cadre of Italian footballing legends’ collective response to a coach’s hire is “Who?” It’s not that Fonseca is the worst coach in the world, but rather that you’d expect the club with the second-most Champions League titles to, you know, hire someone a lot better than a guy who already flopped at Roma.
RedBird Capital have run Paolo Maldini and Stefano Pioli out of town since taking over, and they have nothing to show for their efforts. The current default sporting director under RedBird is now former Milan striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic, who entered the picture with a great deal of fanfare because of his popularity as a celebrity.
Zlatan, outside of bringing in strikers Alvaro Morata and Tammy Abraham, has led Milan nowhere. Milan came into the offseason with a mountain of needs if they wanted to have a squad anywhere near the level of Inter.
But instead of upgrading a poor defense and mediocre midfield, Milan, if anything, downgraded. For example, they were supposed to sign a significant upgrade on Davide Calabria. Instead, they spent 15 million euros on an inferior player in Emerson Royal, who, unsurprisingly, has been burnt to a crisp defensively (the Fred Smooth special, for anyone who watches American football).
All the while, Zlatan was making inane videos with Speed, whose fame is emblematic of the deterioration of what people call “entertainment” these days, though, in fairness, I’d rather watch Speed make a mockery of himself than watch RedBird’s iteration of Milan do the same at the venerable San Siro.
Evidently, Zlatan would rather do things other than watching Milan, too, because he apparently went on vacation instead of attending the match between Milan and Lazio this weekend.
Now, I am all for work-life balance and love a getaway to Calabria or Marbella as much as anyone, but, come on, now. You’d think the director of a floundering team – a team that is floundering partially because of his own poor decisions in his first summer in charge of a club – would cancel his holiday to be there for the team in a big match.
With Zlatan, it feels like he’s focused more on branding and celebrity instead of running the club soundly. He’s like the anti-Maldini of Milan legends – if anyone who actually pays taxes even considers him a Milan legend.
Flash, no Champions League cred, no scouting eye, no ideas. Just Speed videos, jokes, and not a whole lot in the form of results. It looks like it’s going to be a long season for Milan.
