Now we face going into the summer market with no CL football to offer to any potential signings. Last summer was the golden opportunity to do something big in terms of improving the team, instead we wasted it f@cking about with Paolo nd Massara's contracts...

Now Benna being reported to be out for 6 months...

Yep this.

We have t make so many signings for both the first 11 and the bench and we're basically taking ourselves out of the running for a top quality players who will be on the market with no Cl football next season

Pioli really f@cked us over big time by choosing to practically forfeit league games, all to have his team come out looking like deer in headlights

This has got to be one of the most embarrassing sides to ever reach a CL semi final.

Inter are not that bad Han. Let's be realistic.

We're very disappointed but now we have to try and fight our way through to 4th spot. Juventus may very well end up with -9 points, meaning we have to at least get a draw and hope Roma and Lazio will slip up.

Oh and Pierre Kalulu is the new Bruno N'Gotty (anyone remembers or am I the oldest here?). One really good season and then a massive downfall. Perhaps Milans worst player of the season.

Leao's injury cost us this whole tie - he wasn't available for the first leg, and he was about 50% fit for this one. He was a passenger and couldn't do any damage.

It was a gamble, and it didn't work.

Inter also played the low block to perfection - their whole match was sitting in, making us try to break through, and unfortunatey we just didn't have the tools to break that down.

They nullified any threat as well from Leao by marking him closely, their tactic was to protect what they had and they did that well.

We did waste an early chance, but that was the only moment we really had.

It didn't really matter in the end but I wasn't sure why Kjaer was replaced by Thaiow for this one.

I know you guys will be raging, and I can see the anger on the board, but this is a Milan which absolutely fluked its way to the Scudetto last season, and somehow found the Midas touch in the UCL with a good system which got better the further we went.

We crushed Napoli totally, but without Leao, Inter had the upper hand in the semi.

In the end, we made the semis, which is more than any of us would ever have dreamed of at the start of the season.

I'll take it.

A young Milan wins the Scudetto and then reaches the semi final of CL. Anyone who is not satisfied with this (given the resources available) is not being realistic.

It does sting to be knocked out by inter of all teams, but to their defence, they are an experienced squad who have depth in the bench and know how to handle such games.


Forza Milan! On to the next one.

Yet it's not a question of being realistic or not either. It's just that reaching the semis means very little compared to missing out on 4th spot and CL football and making a rather evident step backward and not forward in terms of organizations. It's rather clear that this season is filled with all kinds of mistakes and wrong turns that put the Milan project - not based on short-term results but on a vision to bring Milan truly back on top - in jeopardy.

Making top four or not is what shall define this season, I am totally on that side of the fence. However that doesn?t derail the club from a long-term project; as this project has been set for a while now.

Winning a Scudetto or reaching CL later stages are an anomaly at this stage. But these milestones prove the exception to the rule, in that this team is being built to win.

What should happen now is the new owner putting an effort to add quality and depth to this squad, not doing that is what will put this project - in jeopardy.

Yes, investing is key. But there are also some other factors we should mention:

1) Last summer Milan did invest, but we made some absolutely horrible choices. Of all players we signed or brought back, only Thiaw managed to justify his signing. All others played a minor or even very bad role. CDK also included. Whoever picked these signings must also be questioned and avoid this mistake come this summer.

2) We lack a true leader, or better - Calabria is not captain material. The whole defensive line has been consistently bad for the most part of 2023, but Calabria along Kalulu is the icing on top. He made me rethink my opinion for a moment after the Napoli games, but now it's even clearly that he's a problem we should solve.

3) I'm not referring to Pioli's tactics (which are dubious at best IMO) but to his manhandling. I'm not sure he's the man to go any further with our project. Even if we reach 4th place it will be most likely down to Juventus being take points off and not Milan really deserving to be 4th.

CDK was a bad judgement call, the biggest flop signing Milan have made since Oliveira. I'd never even heard of him and Milan made a huge deal of going after him. For Belgian players to thrive in Italy they need to get a grounding in a big league outside of the Jupiler. It's a hard to league to come to. Sad thing he is a talented player, clearly, but Milan is wrong club in the wrong league.

This is the Milan we have been for a very long time - how we won the title I'll never know, and the UCL run was down to a winning system with a group of players who knew each other and how to play in that competition - with the Midas Touch of Leao's brilliance and a settled back four. Why Kjaer was dropped for leg two I'm not sure.

Unfortunately I can see us selling Leao this summer, probably for a record Italian fee, and that injection alone could allow us to keep building.

But you're right, in many ways, it's just Milan aren't going to ever again be Sacchi's, or Carlo's - we have to accept we're just not the brand or titan we used to be. The Maldini Milan is truly gone, and we now need to find a way to be a good Milan in a new era that has a real push for titles.

That won't be easy in an age of a returning Juve, a returning Inter, a strong Roma and a very strong Napoli. We really are 5th or 6th in Italy these days and they all have more money.

We'll never have a Carlo-type manager again.

Watching City - Madrid last night made me glade Milan didn?t produce a miracle to reach the final.

Guardiola and his team would have humiliated Milan; i.e. ?slapped us silly up and down the pitch?.

If a team as equipped as Madrid were shrugged off in such a manner, I would like to see how inter will hold on. It?s a good omen if you share this perspective.



@Danny, It?s a structural thing with Serie A. The worldwide audience is not as interested as in the EPL, the infrastructure, etc etc. long-term means long-term; being cross Milan didn?t make the final is Ludacris; what?s mad is Milan making the semi final in the first place.

Not so sure. We made Napoli look quite ordinary and they play a similar system to City. And Real are filled with pensioners, it was no shock to see them collapse against a much younger team.




We were mediocre in the group stage, but in the KO stage we lucked out (well I say lucked out) on choosing our best team. Like, why did Pioli not stick with our best team this whole season?

Leao on the left, Diaz or Messias on the right, Giroud central, with Bennacer, Tonali and Krunic while Maignan, Theo, Kjaer, Tomori and Calabria made up the defence.

It was awesome v Napoli. True, Leao was injured for Inter and that made a world of difference.

Just seemed to me the manager tried to fix things that weren't broken.

For me Danny I'm not mad that we went out in the CL semis. Before the season started everyone would have taken a quarter final showing at the most and ran with it. The truth is that this team was already ahead of schedule by winning the league last season, making it to the CL semis is beyond anything we expected. Let's all be honest here

BUT. And that's a big one. Not only did we go out embarrassingly to Inter. Playing 2 really bad games and making them 4 losses in a row to those mediocre mofos, we also threw away the 4th spot to go out with a whimper against Inter. If we had come up against a City or someone of that ilk, it wouldn't have mattered, because they are yards ahead of us. But this Inter is not. We beat them comfortably when we were playing well at the start of the season. They have TEN losses in the league this season. They were playing a back 5 of Darmian, Acerbi (!!), Bastoni, Dumbfries and Dimarco. It was an overall terrible way to go out. And the amount of point we threw away in the league, all to end upp doing that in the semis. It's just not acceptable and it's why I'm personally so angry at Pioli.

Now we have to hope Juve are deducted enough points (will most likely happen) to get us into the top 4 and make sure we win the last 2 as well because Roma and Atalanta are right behind us

If we had been comfortably 2nd, as we should have been going by the points average we had for the 1st half of the season, then I wouldn't be that angry about it. But the way we've basically not come back from the WC break just makes it a bitter pill to swallow.