On Christmas day, a video of a nine-year-old Londoner receiving tickets to watch AC Milan play Roma went viral on social media. Vinnie Essex didn’t know it at the time, but he was off to see il Derby dell’Esonero at San Siro — Serie A’s Sackico.
Milan made it a once-in-a-lifetime experience for the boy. Touched by his excitement at seeing even this off-the-pace side, Milan reached out to Essex’s family and generously made his night one he’ll never forget. There was a tour of the dressing room, the chance to watch Milan warm-up pitchside and photo opportunities with executives Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Essex’s favourite player, the injured Rafael Leao.
Fonseca had been dismissed by Roma in his last spell in Serie A in 2021. On Sunday, Roma effectively dismissed him again. Sent off during the game after protesting the decision not to award Tijjani Reijnders a penalty, Fonseca belatedly received his marching orders an hour or so after a 1-1 draw. A point against his former team wasn’t good enough to save his job and truth be told a win wouldn’t have sufficed either. Owner Gerry Cardinale and his executive team had already held a conclave. They had made up their minds just as Roma’s custodians, the Friedkins, had when they fired Jose Mourinho after this fixture almost one year ago.
Mourinho walked into his office the following morning to find the father-and-son double act waiting for him. As a hit, it was so cold and unexpected the news reduced Mourinho to tears. The Friedkins, to their credit, had kept the decision under wraps, flying to Italy in the dead of night to deliver the blow in person. Fonseca, by contrast, seemed to be the last to know he was on his way out of Milan. He had, after all, managed to eat the Panettone; the Christmas fruit cake, which is a yardstick for a manager’s survival in Serie A. But before kick-off, rumours had already begun circulating that Milan would start the New Year with a new manager. The whispers didn’t stop when Reijnders gave Milan the lead against Roma.
On the contrary, speculation only intensified. Paulo Dybala’s sumptuous equaliser, a volley off a backheel flick by Artem Dovbyk, was missed by all but the Roma supporters at San Siro. Everyone else was turning to the person next to them as if to say: have you seen this? Apparently, Fonseca’s compatriot, Sergio Conceicao, was primed and ready to take over. Conceicao? You mean, the former Inter player? The guy whose Porto teams regularly knocked out a series of Italian sides in Europe these past few years? Come on!
Fonseca’s red card meant he brought forward his departure. For an hour, his assistant, Paulo Ferreira, the former Chelsea defender, was the caretaker for him. It was the best and worst of reality TV and premium drama. The Only Way Is Essex followed by Succession.
Fonseca was sent off in what turned out to be his final game in charge of Milan (Marco Luzzani/Getty Images)
At full-time, details of Conceicao’s contract leaked. He had agreed to a six-month deal with an option in Milan’s favour to extend at the end of the season. The story was broken by a Sky Italia journalist, Peppe Di Stefano, in a piece-to-camera from the press room at San Siro while he waited for the managers to file in for their post-match media duties. Fonseca was under no obligation to show up for the customary debrief.
Mourinho, for what it’s worth, used to dodge press conferences after games in which he’d been ejected. You would have thought Fonseca might have been spared the indignity of talking. The end of his time at Milan had, after all, already been unofficially foretold.
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Reijnders scored after 16 minutes, but Milan conceded an equaliser seven minutes later (Piero Cruciatti/AFP via Getty Images)
And yet all of a sudden there was the commotion typical of when a manager walks into a room deep in a stadium as reporters rush to put their phones on the desk and stumble awkwardly, laptops half-cocked, to their seats. It was Fonseca. “I haven’t met (Zlatan Ibrahimovic, the senior advisor to owners RedBird Capital and the AC Milan board),” he said. “I haven’t seen anyone from the club. I can’t say anything more. I can’t invent things that haven’t happened.” Fonseca expected to be back in the dugout for the Super Cup in Saudi Arabia next week. No one else did.
The brave face Fonseca put on wasn’t the last he wore. As he pulled out of San Siro an hour later, Fonseca buzzed down the window of his company car and went on the record when no one from the club was prepared to. He confirmed the reports, smiling an incredulous smile. “It’s true,” the 51-year-old said. “I’m out. That’s life. I have a calm conscience. I gave it all I could.” Few disputed the decision, but the handling of Fonseca’s exit was shabby. Even if leaks undermined the executive team’s desire to do right by him, he deserved to be treated with the class Milan showed in their treatment of the kid, Essex.
That a change was necessary wasn’t in dispute. The draw left Milan eighth in Serie A. The hope, after finishing second last season, was they would be contenders again, only closer and more competitive. Instead, league leaders Atalanta are 14 points in the distance. Worryingly, Milan are eight points adrift of the Champions League places and hadn’t reckoned on Lazio, Fiorentina and Bologna being in the mix again this season. Prestige wins against champions Inter, which ended a six-game losing streak against their rivals, not to mention a feelgood night against Champions League holders Real Madrid at the Bernabeu, were exceptions to the rule of an inconsistent, poorly balanced team.
Five of their seven wins came against sides in the bottom half of the table. Milan squeezed past bottom-of-the-table Monza, weren’t convincing against a Verona outfit that has taken some humiliating beatings this season, dropped two points and conceded three against Cagliari and played out a goalless draw against a Genoa team left in a state of limbo by then-owners 777.
While Milan’s principal rivals averaged nearly double their net spend, there was no repeat of last season’s Sandro Tonali sale. Other teams changed coach, let big names go in the transfer market and yet they’re still doing better. Napoli sent Victor Osimhen on loan to Galatasaray, Atalanta bid farewell to Teun Koopmeiners, Lazio saluted all-time top scorer Ciro Immobile and Luis Alberto, Juventus pushed Federico Chiesa out the door, Fiorentina sold Nico Gonzalez, and Bologna couldn’t deny Joshua Zirkzee and Riccardo Calafiori their big moves to the Premier League.
Tammy Abraham has scored only two league goals for Milan (Luca Amedeo Bizzarri/Getty Images)
Milan kept all their best players. Another transfer window passed and Leao and Theo Hernandez were still at the club. The problem is that Fonseca clashed with them. Fonseca was not a soft touch in his two years at Roma, as he showed in taking on Edin Dzeko. Nevertheless, upon returning to Italy, he seemed too in his own head about changing the perception of himself as Mr Nice Guy. Fonseca got tough and the line between bravery and foolishness, at times, became imperceptible. There was a ballsiness in the way he benched Leao and Hernandez for his first big game of the season away to Lazio, particularly as the decision came so early in the campaign and followed a draw against Torino and defeat to newly promoted Parma.
On the one hand, the reaction it provoked in them was to the benefit of the team. Within seconds of Fonseca bringing them on at the Olimpico, they combined exquisitely to rescue the team from defeat. On the other, the visual of Leao and Hernandez standing on the other side of the pitch while Fonseca held a team talk during an in-game cooling break gave the impression he’d lost his two senior players and it wasn’t even the end of August. Leao ended up responding well to the feeling he should do more to help his team out of possession. The soul-searching that spells on the sidelines tend to provoke led to a rebound in performances, but his comments, while on international duty in October, about Portugal coach Roberto Martinez allowing him to be true to himself were interpreted as pointed.
Hernandez’s displays, meanwhile, showed fleeting signs of recovery, yet this has been his worst season since the teething problems of his first campaign in Italy. After the late 2-1 win over Crvena zvezda at the start of December, Fonseca heavily criticised his players’ work ethic and vowed to play the kids from the Milan Futuro team instead if their attitude didn’t change. Hernandez was left out of the next game against Genoa and although he was soon reintegrated and skippered the team at the weekend, the gesture to hand him the armband was perceived as an olive branch rather than a routine acknowledgement of his seniority.
Theo Hernandez and Rafael Leao were both benched by Fonseca early in the season (Marco Luzzani/Getty Images)
Commanding respect and making sure the players followed his instructions was a challenge for Fonseca. Early on, Milan had a frustrating habit of conceding the same goal over and over again. Later, against Fiorentina, the players disregarded Christian Pulisic’s role as the team’s designated penalty taker. Milan were awarded a couple at the Artemio Franchi and Hernandez and Tammy Abraham’s attempts were saved by David De Gea in a damaging 2-1 defeat. It was another big-game loss and it was followed by others at home to Napoli and away to Atalanta. Even a stalemate with unbeaten Juventus did little to enhance Fonseca’s reputation, calling it “one of the most boring games of my career” and adding: “If I were in the stands, I would have whistled, too.”
While Pulisic and Reijnders ascended to new heights under his management, others such as Fikayo Tomori and Ruben Loftus-Cheek struggled. Fonseca had been appointed to give Milan more solutions as a possession-dominant team than under Stefano Pioli. Using Yunus Musah as an occasional balancing agent on the wing was not what some at the club had in mind.
In mitigation, Fonseca faced an uphill battle from the start. He was not perceived as Milan’s first choice. The backlash to the idea of Julen Lopetegui assuming the reins laid bare the expectation levels in the Curva Sud. The ultras wanted Antonio Conte. Differences over salary and influence on recruitment mattered little to them. His predictable restoration of Napoli — joint top, 14 points ahead of Milan — has only hardened their conviction that they know Italian football better than the club’s current executive team.
The best way for Fonseca to win over the fans was to start well. He did not, however, get the chance to work with the likes of Mike Maignan, Hernandez, Leao and summer signing Alvaro Morata until late in pre-season because of their prolonged involvement in the Euros. Unlike the previous year, when Milan used the Tonali money to do business early, this year, Emerson Royal, Youssef Fofana and Tammy Abraham only arrived in August.
Royal, who chose the number of Milan’s last Ballon d’Or winner, Kaka, for himself, has been an expensive calamity. Strahinja Pavlovic, the left-sided centre-back who joined from Red Bull Salzburg, hasn’t started a league game since Milan shipped three goals in Sardinia almost two months ago. Abraham, a low-risk loan from Roma, has contributed a single non-penalty goal and Morata is relying on teenage wonderkid Francesco Camarda for backup as Luka Jovic is nowhere to be seen.
This comes at a time when Charles de Ketelaere, who Milan sold to Atalanta, is arguably the best player in the league; Marco Brescianini, a former academy player, is helping the league leaders with goals off the bench; Pierre Kalulu, a Scudetto winner with Milan, is Juventus’ best defender in Gleison Bremer’s absence; Yacine Adli is pulling the strings for Fiorentina; and Daniel Maldini keeps making the Italy squad despite Monza staring Serie B in the face. The lack of an Italian core, a feature of every Italian champion since Inter in 2010 and the current frontrunners Inter and Atalanta, is an under-appreciated issue regardless of the presence of Camarda and fellow Under-17 European Championship winner Mattia Liberali in the first-team squad.
Charles de Ketelaere has helped Atalanta to the top of the Serie A table (Francesco Scaccianoce/Getty Images)
Fonseca cut an isolated figure at times. Much was made of Zlatan’s absence for the Lazio game when Leao and Hernandez appeared to show dissent. Fonseca has been left alone to complain about perceived refereeing mistakes when, at other clubs, executives step in and demand more respect from officials in post-game interviews. Ibrahimovic’s silence and recent lack of media activity is conspicuous considering his role in unveiling Fonseca as well as several recruits back in the summer. Verbal jousts with pundits, including former Milan executive Zvonimir Boban, before Champions League games have since been followed by a disquieting quiet from someone historically unafraid to speak his mind.
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Beyond CEO Giorgio Furlani brushing off the Leao-Hernandez incidents as a “non-event”, a public defence of Fonseca was never made. In a league where presidents, vice presidents, sporting directors, technical directors and their wives are expected to be heard from (alright, maybe not their wives) the absence of a willing spokesperson stands out. It was glaring that no one from the club addressed the Fonseca uncertainty pre-game or fronted up post-game on Sunday.
This did nothing to disabuse fans and media of the notion that its executive team is shadowy. Job titles alone aren’t enough in Italy to make it clear what the hierarchy is and whose role counts for more. The average Milan fan isn’t sure who the boss is, which in turn makes it hard to be sure who the authority figure is at Milan beyond Cardinale, the owner.
The Milan faithful are still turning up, but they are not happy (Marco Luzzani/Getty Images)
He is having to weather a storm. Unlike Elliott, the previous owners, he didn’t take over a drifting club at risk of bankruptcy. He bought a champion. The expectations, therefore, were very different. Headlines about trying to be “Silvio Berlusconi 2.0” showed the right ambition, but have not helped as the late Berlusconi, a huge figure in Italian life, was the most successful owner in the history of the game next to Santiago Bernabeu of Real Madrid.
The sacking of club legend and technical director Paolo Maldini a year into Cardinale’s ownership brought an end to his grace period. Every decision, right or wrong, now gets little benefit of the doubt and the combination of losing a Champions League semi-final to Inter one season, Inter clinching a 20th Scudetto in the derby the next, and the team having its worst Christmas in five years has caused the ultras to turn.
The 0-0 with Genoa on the club’s 125th anniversary brought an escalation. Maldini, a man so synonymous with Milan as to be indistinguishable, chose not to attend the event. Boban, his old team-mate and former partner on the executive team, claimed he wasn’t invited. Watching from above as legends Franco Baresi, Marco van Basten and Pippo Inzaghi walked out on the pitch, the ultras saw everything they believe this current Milan are not. Cardinale, perhaps wisely, stayed away, although his absence drew criticism.
Ibrahimovic has been uncharacteristically quiet in recent weeks (Alessandro Sabattini/Getty Images)
Outside a private party the following night, all but six of the first-teamers were whistled as they made their way inside the venue. A banner read: ‘Giocatori senza voglia e dignita’/siete lo specchio di questa societa’.
It poetically accused the players of undignified and desire-less performances, a reflection, in their opinion, of where the club is at in 2025. San Siro is the hardest place to play at the best of times in Italy. How about these times, then?
The atmosphere only made it more difficult for Fonseca to turn things around. Chants of “we are not American” and “Cardinale has to sell” have grown louder and louder week after week as fans have the (often misguided) impression that owners from the U.S. care about building new stadiums and driving revenues first and football second. That the former is essential to making the latter better is either lost in translation or falls on deaf ears.
Cardinale isn’t going anywhere. Only last week, he partially paid down and extended the loan he took out from Elliott to buy the club.
Whether Conceicao, a Diego Simeone-like figure at Porto, can be a success outside of that club remains to be seen. That he kept them competitive when the churn of player sales increased in volume was impressive, as were his results in Europe relative to Porto’s standing. The 50-year-old’s past at Inter shouldn’t be too much of a problem either considering how many players cross the divide and a prospective match-up with them in the final of the Italian Super Cup next week represents a great chance, along with the January transfer window, to alter the mood at Milan.
Right now, a balance needs to be struck between the fantasies of a fanbase for whom memories of Berlusconi using the Ballon d’Or shortlist as a shopping list continue to linger and the reality of a changed economic landscape in which Italian football lags behind its rivals in TV money and infrastructure.
Nine-year-old Vinnie Essex is too young to remember Milan winning any of their seven Champions League titles. For now, an eighth is the stuff of wild fever dreams. But Milan’s history obliges them to dare. Although quilted in the language of sustainability, real ambition is there. To fans, however, sustainability implies caution and brings with it the enduring contention: is the club daring enough?
(Top photo: Piero Cruciatti/AFP via Getty Images)
