Milan, Fonseca sacked, Conceiçao arrives

Milan decided to sack Paulo Fonseca and communicated it to him at midnight, the fatal hour. The last match of the year was also his last at Milan, with an expulsion coming at the end of six crazy, very complicated months, full of everything: historic victories against Inter and Real Madrid, daring draws, too many defeats against inferior teams . Fonseca greets San Siro after the match against Roma, his other Italian team, in one of the strange intersections that football and life propose. What happened? Milan, evidently, has lost confidence and the relationship with the club has broken down. There are too many points behind Atalanta, Inter and Napoli. The ranking is too tough: eighth place, also behind Lazio, Fiorentina, Juventus and Bologna. Fonseca would have been sacked if he had lost the derby – that’s for sure – and probably also in the event of a defeat in Verona, before Christmas. It is impossible to continue with this precariousness.

CONCEIçAO ARRIVES

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His successor will be Portuguese like him: Sergio Conceiçao, out of action after the breakup at the beginning of June with Porto, whom he had coached since 2017. Seven seasons with three championships won. Milan already thought about him in the summer: there were contacts, dialogues, then Furlani-Moncada-Ibrahimovic chose Lopetegui and Fonseca. Six months later, here we go again, with a choice made by the three men in the technical area together with Gerry Cardinale. Conceiçao is ready to return and in recent weeks he has said no to Wolverhampton and some Brazilian clubs: he was waiting for Milan. Milan chose him for his winning CV, his consistency of results in Europe – in his seven seasons Porto reached the quarter-finals of the Champions League twice, three more in the round of 16 – and his tough character. Evidently, the club believes that with this team, after Fonseca’s strong stances in recent months, even more decision is needed. Conceiçao has an agreement until June 2026 with an option. In all this, for that discussion of the combinations of life, two sensational ones. Milan, as with Pioli and Mihajlovic, takes a former Inter player. And Conceiçao, in his first outing as a Milan player, will coach (in the Super Cup) against his son Francisco’s Juventus.

HIS SEASON

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Fonseca finished with 12 wins, 6 draws and 6 defeats, a record not up to the intentions of the beginning of the year. A lot has gone wrong in the championship: the terrible match in August with Parma (2-1 for the yellow and blue), the 2-2 with Lazio with the cooling break case, the absurd 2-1 in Florence with two missed penalties, the clear defeat (but how many absences that day…) against Napoli. And again the 3-3 in Cagliari with Zappa’s brace in the second half, the 0-0 with just one shot on target against Juventus, the 2-1 for Atalanta in Bergamo. It went much better in the Champions League: Milan lost the first two games, against Liverpool and Leverkusen, then turned the corner with the feat in Madrid, against a resigned Real, distracted but still full of champions. The club’s second victory at the Bernabeu in its history. With the Scudetto now someone else’s business and the Champions League race uphill, Fonseca will not be able to play for the Super Cup, the fourth most important trophy of the season but now decidedly useful to give meaning to the season.

WHAT REMAINS

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His parenthesis at Milan will remain in the memory especially for the positions he took with Rafa Leao and Theo Hernandez, the stars of Milan. A courageous way to take the chance of a lifetime. Fonseca has chosen to change everything compared to the Pioli era, which was exciting for a long time but ended badly. Men with different ideas. Pioli played man for man across the pitch and thrived on transitions, Fonseca focused on ball possession and pace management. Pioli was conciliatory with the players – for some almost a second father – while Fonseca established his principles and put those who didn’t respect them on the bench: Leao was kept out for his lack of defensive application, Theo for his reduced commitment. How did it go? Some answers came from Leao, but not from Theo or – perhaps Fonseca will think – there wasn’t time. The feeling remains of an ambitious project that collapsed in six months: Fonseca wanted to change Milan’s mentality, go through difficult moments to give new motivation to some players and perhaps change others. He didn’t have the support of the results: if you’re eighth with Milan after four months, you’re at risk. A Portuguese proverb says, which perhaps more than one person also uses in Italy: “The prudent man dies when he is old”. Fonseca went in the opposite direction and who knows, if he will ever regret it.