After the loss to Atalanta, AC Milan have been compared to Tottenham Hotspur due to their ambitions and success in achieving them.
As the season wraps up, Milan are not even left thinking what if. Instead, there is just anger at the management, the players, and everyone. Why, after the start which they had to the season, are we in this position?
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At one stage, there was an eight-point gap to fifth place, if not more. Now, they are lucky not to be in fifth themselves. It is a crumbling of the highest order and significant changes are expected in the summer.
Unfortunately, it is not a case of expectation either. This is not a fanbase throwing their toys out of the pram; it is another realisation that things are not good enough. Maybe they never were…
A damning comparison
Today, the MilanNews podcast was released, and an excerpt has been published on their website, where they have made a pretty damning comparison.
“The title is a great provocation, but not far from reality. Leaving aside the history of the two clubs—on the one hand, one of the most successful and historic teams in Europe, on the other, a team that hasn’t written any memorable chapters— current events overlap Milan and Tottenham more than we’d like to admit.
“The facts speak for themselves, the performances speak for themselves, the climate of constant protest against the ownership speaks for itself, the very few trophies won while their opponents sweep them all, the constant humiliations suffered on the pitch speak for themselves.
“Since RedBird’s arrival, Milan has become the Tottenham of Italy, spitting contemptuously on its glorious history built with great effort and pride over the years.
“The most important: there’s no intention of winning. There’s no intention of even trying . They’re just getting by, buoyed by the stadium and the immense revenues from the Premier League.
“We can easily believe, half-jokingly, that if someone on the fourth floor of Casa Milan read the title of this piece, they’d exclaim: “If only we had a stadium!”
“Let’s get back to talking about it in order. The commonalities are starting to become worrying. A club that claims to be ambitious only in words but doesn’t actually compete at all every year . They can check it off. Limited wages compared to their rivals. They can check it off.
“Players lost on the market for a few hundred thousand euros (Eze to Arsenal, Thuram to Inter). They can check it off. A great centralising boss who has his nose in every area of the club. Until last year, Tottenham had executive president Daniel Levy (who left the club after 24 years in the role), and AC Milan have CEO Giorgio Furlani.
“Here too, they can check it off. In London, fans and coaches have complained openly about Levy. In Italy, there’s an unprecedented protest, including signature collections and stadium protests, against CEO Furlani, guilty of exceeding his role by effectively making AC Milan his personal “playground.”
“It’s now cleared: in January, the Mateta case caused a lot of embarrassment when Tare found himself bypassed by the CEO. Much like what happened years ago, Maldini was still there when Dybala’s agent was contacted.
“We’ll delve deeper into everything in the podcast attached to this piece, but we’ll put the final warning in black and white here, too.
“We must be extremely careful because it’s easy to slip into the abyss and not understand what happened: Tottenham went from playing in the Champions League and Europa League finals to struggling to avoid relegation for two consecutive seasons. And this year, there’s no guarantee they’ll be able to stay in the English top flight.
“Be extremely careful, don’t play with fire. With this mentality and this habituation to constant sporting humiliations, almost anaesthetising oneself to mediocrity, it’s easy to end up in tragic situations, sportingly speaking.
“There’s a vital need to restore sporting dignity to AC Milan. Unlike Tottenham, history shows they’ve had plenty of it.”