The message was spelled out not with the usual banners and bedsheets but instead with human bodies. On the Curva Sud at San Siro, hundreds of Milan supporters gathered together in tightly choreographed ranks until they resembled five enormous letters stretching out across the second tier. Together they formed the word “BASTA”. They were telling the world they’d had enough.
Others had voted with their feet by staying away. Although the official attendance figure for Wednesday night’s game against Genoa – including all season ticket holders – was more than 25,000, La Repubblica estimated that there were fewer than 15,000 people present. We have grown accustomed to seeing San Siro half-empty in recent years, but average crowds this season have still been more than double that size.
It is all a far cry from July, when thousands turned up to see Pippo Inzaghi unveiled as manager at the club’s swanky new Casa Milan headquarters. Back then it was hoped that having such a beloved figure at the helm could restore waning enthusiasm. But nostalgia can only sustain you so long.
Inzaghi has not been able to elevate his team from the sidelines as he once did on the pitch. Nobody would dispute that today’s Milan squad is of a drastically lower calibre than the ones he played in but, with the third-highest wage bill in Serie A, they still ought to be a lot better than this. The Rossoneri arrived at the Genoa fixture having collected only 43 points from their first 32 games this season. Clarence Seedorf was fired last June after earning 35 from his 19 matches in charge.
It was reported after Sunday’s defeat to Udinese that Inzaghi had lost the changing room. Nigel de Jong, in particular, was said to have reacted badly to being told that the squad would be placed in a punitive training camp. He was alleged to have clashed with Inzaghi on the team bus, although the midfielder later accused the press of misrepresenting what had happened, encouraging his Twitter followers not to “assume the first thing you are reading is the truth”.
Press is the press for a reason. Always looking for a hype. Don't assume the first thing you are reading is the truth #ignoranza
— Nigel de Jong (@NDJ_Official) April 28, 2015
Others spoke out in support of Inzaghi, Riccardo Montolivo insisting that the decision to go into the training camp had been made jointly by the manager with his players. More than anything, though, what Milan needed was to deliver a response on the pitch. Tenth in the table and four points behind Genoa before kick-off, they were effectively out of the running for a European place but could at least have salvaged a little pride.
Instead, the opposite unfolded – Milan swept away by opponents who were hungrier, more dynamic, and ultimately just an awful lot better. Genoa’s first shot on goal, from Andrea Bertolacci, arrived in the first minute, and Diego López had been called into action three times already by the fourth. Only the Milan goalkeeper’s smart stops kept his team in the game.
López could not deny Bertolacci in the 37th minute, though, when the Genoa midfielder sidestepped an overzealous challenge on the edge of the box before passing into the corner of the net. Even more galling for Milan was the visitors’ second goal, which arrived shortly after the interval and was scored by their very own M’Baye Niang.
Sent out on loan to Genoa in January, the Frenchman had already done more than enough over the last three months to make Milan’s fans wonder why he had been cast aside at San Siro. This was his fifth goal in 12 games for the Grifone, if admittedly not the most beautiful – deflected in at close range off an initial shot by Tino Costa.
Niang’s explosive runs, together with those of his team-mate Iago Falqué, tormented Milan’s defence all evening. Although an extraordinary goal from Philippe Mexès – blasted in off the underside of the bar from outside the area – gave the hosts brief hopes of a comeback, they never generated enough attacking momentum to make it seem possible. Instead, Genoa sealed a 3-1 victory with a Falqué penalty in second-half injury time. It was the first time they had won at San Siro since 1958.
At his post-match press conference, Inzaghi was asked whether the time had come to resign. “To run away is cowardly,” he replied, before acknowledging that the decision might soon be taken out of his hands. “The club will reflect and whatever happens Milan will stay in my heart. Tomorrow we will know.”
No decision had been made by time of writing, leaving Inzaghi to lead Thursday morning’s training session as usual. If he were to lose his job, it is expected that youth team coach Cristian Brocchi would take over as caretaker manager until the end of the season.
The decision has been complicated for the club owner, Silvio Berlusconi, however, by the fact that negotiations to sell his majority share in Milan appear to be nearing their conclusion. He watched Wednesday’s game at his Arcore residence in the company of the Thai businessman Bee Taechaubol – referred to most often in the Italian press as Mr Bee – leader of the consortium that is widely perceived as the front-runner to purchase the club.
Taechaubol’s group is said to be offering €500m (£362m) for somewhere between 51% and 60% of the club. Gazzetta dello Sport’s Pierfrancesco Archetti joked that after watching Wednesday’s game, “they will have immediately asked for a discount”.
In reality, of course, Taechaubol’s interest in Milan will have a lot less to do with the present squad than it does with the club’s international brand. Inzaghi helped to build that brand with his goals. But as a manager, it appears, he might not have any more to give.
Talking points
• The midweek round certainly wasn’t short of eye-catching goals. Besides Mexès’s consolation for Milan, we had Marco Parolo belting one in from 30 yards for Lazio against Parma, Alessandro Florenzi going solo against Sassuolo and Mauricio Pinilla with yet another overhead kick. Josip Ilicic’s free-kick against Juventus wasn’t too bad, either.
Josip Iličić's curls home a beautiful free-kick for Fiorentina at Juventus. http://t.co/CKTtoGWYTx
— BT Sport Football (@btsportfootball) April 29, 2015
• Seydou Doumbia’s reputation among Roma supporters had taken a hit at the weekend when one of them filmed him failing to warm-up for four solid minutes by the corner flag as fellow substitutes jogged and stretched around him. Rudi Garcia subsequently laid into the fan in question, asserting that the player had just spent all of half-time limbering up. But Doumbia came up with a better answer, his first Roma goal in what became a 3-0 rout of Sassuolo. With the Champions League race tightening up, now would be an excellent time for him to start proving that he can be the striker this team so desperately needs.
• Speaking of first goals, how about Lukas Podolski – finally opening his Inter account with an absolute belter in Tuesday night’s win over Udinese? Despite the three points vaulting the Nerazzurri back into the Europa League race, Roberto Mancini was said to have been livid with the performance of his team – who threw away an initial one-goal lead. Gazzetta report that he refused to even speak to his players after the game, and did not give any kind of debriefing after Wednesday’s training session, either.
• It has long been a question of when, rather than, if Parma would be relegated, but a 4-0 defeat to Lazio on Wednesday means that it is no longer possible for them to get enough points to survive. “We need to take to heart [after] everything negative that has happened off the pitch, but also all the positive things that have happened on it,” said Roberto Donadoni afterwards. “It has been a complicated year.”
• Victories for Roma and Lazio have put the pressure back on Napoli to beat Empoli and sustain their top-three push. And in the meantime, the Partenopei’s owner, Aurelio De Laurentiis, is putting Rafa Benítez under pressure to make a decision on his future. “I’ve told him that he can say one more year or five more years, and that his family could live in Rome, so his daughter could study at the English school there,” said De Laurentiis. “He told me that he needed to speak to his family and then we would see each other again on Saturday.”
• Lazio’s win also denied Juventus the opportunity to tie up their Scudetto on Wednesday night, although the Bianconeri are now just a single point away following their 3-2 win over Fiorentina. Two more goals for Carlos Tévez also kept him atop the scorers’ charts. And the first of them was made in Manchester – Patrice Evra providing the cross.
Results: Cesena 2-2 Atalanta, Chievo 1-0 Cagliari, Juventus 3-2 Fiorentina, Lazio 4-0 Parma, Milan 1-3 Genoa, Palermo 2-2 Torino, Sampdoria 1-1 Verona, Sassuolo 0-3 Roma, Udinese 1-2 Inter.
