This is the story of a team that had begun to build itself in shame. December 22, 2019: AC Milan was humiliated 5-0 in Bergamo, by Atalanta.
AC Milan has suffered more than a decade of disappointment since the title for Allegri in 2011 but Pioli has brought back the glory days. Former Serie A players such as Clarence Seedorf, Filippo Inzaghi, Sinisa Mihajlovic, Vincenzo Montella, and Gennaro Gattuso have all tried their best possible and failed to revive the former European champions.
Director of the sports sector, Paolo Maldini then sounded the alarm. AC Milan begins a mini-revolution: recruitment is rigorous and targets young players with high potential, accompanied by a few carefully chosen veterans.
Stefano Pioli is confirmed in his functions and builds a team with a versatile style, capable of assuming possession as well as playing skillfully in transition. Second, in Serie A in 2020-2021, Milan had already glimpsed a fragment of its past glory a year earlier. Failing to have fully found it on May 22 2022, the Diavolo tasted the ecstasy of a Scudetto that its Tifosi had been waiting for eleven years now.
Victory After 11 Years For AC Milan
This title crowns the victory of a methodology, measured and noticeably intelligent management, almost free of errors for three years now. Forced into financial sobriety, AC Milan thought and planned much better than everyone else. It is enough to see the level displayed by many of its executives, recruited at knockdown prices or for reasonable amounts.
The most telling example? Theo Hernández (20 million euros), Pierre Kalulu (480,000 euros), Simon Kjær (2.5 million), Brahim Díaz (3 million), Olivier Giroud (1 million) to name but a few.
At 35, the French striker ended his season with a double at Sassuoloby bringing his total of goals to eleven in Serie A. At the beginning of February, it was he who had masterfully launched Milan on the trail of his nineteenth star by planting two banderillas in the back of Inter Milan’s net during the 24th day of the League. A decisive success: with 86 points, the Diavolo finished two-point above its arch-rival.
However, it is not the former Arsenal man who can be described as the absolute MVP of the Lombard exercise, because two other men can share this honor. Mike Maignan, a virtuoso in the woods, is of course one of them. Rafael Leão too: with 11 goals and 10 assists in the league – including three against Sassuolo in the last match of the league – the Portuguese winger has often been levitating on his left side at the end of a season that resembles that of his explosion at most high level.
Pioli will have rightly granted the whole in a 4-2-3-1 cemented by an exceptionally solid and united collective. With only 31 goals conceded, the Red and Blacks are in fact the best defense in Serie A alongside Napoli.
Small Feat But Big Victory
It remains to be seen what precisely this Scudetto says. Cartesian and balanced like a beautiful mathematical formula, AC Milan is not quite virtuoso. It is even only the fourth in Serie A, something extremely rare for a champion. In Europe, they did not stand out, finishing pitifully last in the group with four points on the clock.
Given the workforce, one could even argue that seeing AC Milan win this Serie A is a feat. Inter were significantly better armed, Juventus too. But the announced behemoths did not quite fuel as expected. Especially the Old Lady, whose poor collective rendering was the illustration of her inability to rethink her sporting strategy, on and off the meadows.
Diavolo will have done precisely the opposite and proved even diminished, AC Milan is and will always remain synonymous with greatness.
