Complex character, evident personality: the new Milan coach forges and has forged between strict rules, dialogue, sensitivity and hints of cynicism. Like when he told his son he needed to lose weight, “If you’re hungry, drink.”
Sergio Conceiçao is a mixture of earth, tears, traditional football, religion, nerves (many nerves) and sensitivity. It’s all the rage because it won immediately and brings back men from other times, more genuine than sophisticated, more direct than conceptual. It is multifaceted, varied, not so simple to understand and it would be even more so for an Englishman, perhaps for a Frenchman, for a Barcelona season ticket holder certainly. In Italy, however, we had José Mourinho and Antonio Conte and in short, we are trained. “He coaches with astonishing pragmatic genius,” said Gianni Brera of Nereo Rocco, patriarch of AC Milan, and that is the path. Conceiçao has similarities with Mou and Conte and in the hereditary line of AC Milan coaches he certainly has something of Rocco and Capello, while Fonseca in principle deferred rather to Arrigo Sacchi: the domination of the game, the long tactical explanations, the stars on the bench due to lack of application . The first few weeks put the focus on Sergio the iron sergeant, who certainly exists, but there is more to this man. There is the personal side which for him, as for almost everyone, is the most interesting. Conceiçao does not give access to his private life – don’t bother looking for revelations from his wife, you won’t find them – but more than one thing has been understood.