Vincenzo Montella did not see the curtain coming down. San Siro might sometimes be referred to as La Scala del Calcio – football’s answer to Milan’s famous opera house – but his team’s performances this season had rarely been worthy of such a stage. On Sunday, the Rossoneri drew 0-0 at home to Torino. It was their fourth consecutive home game without a goal in Serie A.
An audience of 54,000 people jeered at the conclusion. Still, Montella continued to see his glass as half full. “We dictated the game from start to finish,” he insisted. “The only thing missing was a little bit of nastiness in front of goal.”
He might have had a point, on this occasion. Milan took twice as many shots – and put three times as many on target – as Torino, only to be thwarted by a combination of their own poor finishing plus some fine goalkeeping from Salvatore Sirigu. A lesser talent might not have kept out Nikola Kalinic’s close-range header in the 67th minute, let alone recovered to block the follow-up as well.
Montella should know by now, though, that a lack of nastiness on the pitch tends to have unpleasant consequences off of it. As a player, he possessed those precise ruthless qualities that Milan have lacked. As a manager, he paid the price for his team’s profligacy, informed on Monday morning that his services were no longer required.
The season is barely 14 games old, but plenty of people will already see this move as overdue. Many were perplexed from the outset that an ownership group which spent close to €200m on new players this summer would not also want to select their own manager to nurture such investment.
By choosing to stick with Montella, they hoped instead to maintain a sense of continuity: allowing him to build on the foundations of a side he had guided back into Europe for the first time in three seasons. With hindsight, that was always a fantasy. How could there be a natural progression when more than half of the players who took to the field for Milan this weekend did not start a game for them last year?
And then there is the question of whether Montella had yet proven himself capable of leading such an ambitious project. Yes, he did well at Catania and Fiorentina, steering the former to a club-record points tally, and the latter to three consecutive fourth-place finishes. But Montella had never qualified a team to the Champions League: a supposed minimum target for Milan.
It is clear now that he never got a handle on this revamped squad. At times, Montella seemed overwhelmed by the sheer number of options available to him. Milan have played 23 games across all competitions this season, without ever retaining the same starting XI from one to the next.
There is sense in rotating to conserve key players’ energies when you are competing on multiple fronts. Milan’s season began with Europa League qualifying all the way back in July. But such endless tinkering has hindered the integration of so many new faces into a coherent team. Montella, furthermore, infuriated fans with his reluctance to trust certain players for league games.
Kalinic had already been whistled by home supporters during Milan’s draw with Genoa last month, and was singled out again as he came off in the second-half on Sunday. Since scoring a brace in his first start, the Croatian has found the net just once in 11 appearances. So why has Montella persisted with him ahead of Patrick Cutrone or André Silva?
The latter is yet to score in Serie A, but Sunday was only his fourth league start. He has eight goals in nine European games. Cutrone, a 19-year-old academy graduate who has been touted for some time as one of the coming talents of Italian football, began the season with two goals and an assist in wins over Crotone and Cagliari – yet has started a single league match since.
Montella could cite tactical considerations, often preferring to start with a lone striker in Serie A since that left him scope to move top scorer Suso into a more advanced position on the right. It is also true that Europa League performances should be taken with a pinch of salt, given the poor calibre of opposition that Milan have faced.
Regardless, all that really matters is that Montella’s approach was not working. This is only the third time in Milan’s history that they have gone four games without a goal at home. Draws for Roma and Lazio mean they did not lose further ground in the Champions League race, but they are already 11 points out of fourth – and both of those clubs have a game in hand (as do sixth-placed Sampdoria).
Most damning of all, Milan are nine points worse off than they were at the corresponding stage last season. This was supposed to be the year of their revival, that summer splurge reinvigorating the fanbase and sending expectations through the roof. Average attendances are up by some 15,000. And yet, the team has been moving backwards.
Will firing Montella turn things around? He has been replaced, in the immediate term, by Gennaro Gattuso – who had been coaching the youth team. The latter has enjoyed a varied managerial career to date, with stops at Sion, Palermo and OFI Crete, but he has never worked under conditions like these. His greatest success was taking Pisa from Lega Pro to Serie B.
Perhaps Milan are keen to keep a familiar face at the helm, a reassuring symbol at a time when fresh questions are being raised about the club’s ownership. Fans, though, are unlikely to be swayed by that alone so soon after seeing Gattuso’s former team-mates Pippo Inzaghi and Clarence Seedorf falter.
If nothing else, Milan will hope that Gattuso – a two-time Champions League winner as a player at the club – can remind the squad of precisely what is expected. “We need to remember that we’re Milan,” said sporting director Massimo Mirabelli on Sunday. “We play to win – not just to take part. We have no more time for mistakes.”
And no more time, it seems, for Montella.
Talking points
• At least one person enjoyed a happier night at San Siro: Leonardo Bonucci’s son Lorenzo got a shirt and a kiss from his favourite player, Andrea Belotti, at full-time.
• Napoli host Juventus on Friday in what is already being billed as a Scudetto showdown (we’ll conveniently forget for a moment that Inter sit between the two of them in the table). Both teams won this weekend, allowing the Partenopei to maintain a five-point advantage over the reigning champs, but the more significant development might be the news that Gonzalo Higuaín has suffered a fractured hand, and will miss this chance to line-up against his former team.
• Mattia De Sciglio grabbed Juve’s second against with a lovely first-time strike from the edge of the box. And yet, in the moment, he barely seemed to celebrate. Just another too-respectful player not wanting to offend a former club? Nope – his only previous employers are Milan. As De Sciglio would later explain, what actually happened in that moment was that he realised all at once that he didn’t know how to celebrate a goal. He had never scored one before in 137 games as a pro.
• Mauro Icardi pulled level with Ciro Immobile atop the scoring charts after grabbing yet another brace – his fifth of the season, to go with one hat-trick – as Inter won 3-1 away to Cagliari. He could have had even more, failing to get a clean connection with the ball when Matías Vecino’s cross offered him an open goal at the back post. Right now, though, Icardi might be the single most important player to any team in the division. His 15 goals represent 54% of Inter’s Serie A total.
• It was not-so-happy slapping from Daniele De Rossi, who threw away two points for Roma in quite the most ridiculous of ways. The Giallorossi were 1-0 up at Genoa in the 70th minute when he wafted a hand at the face of Gianluca Lapadula as they jostled at a corner. It wasn’t an especially violent gesture, but it was a very silly one in a league where video reviews hold sway. A penalty was duly awarded, and converted by Lapadula, while De Rossi was dismissed.
😄 1-0 up
— BT Sport Football (@btsportfootball) November 27, 2017
👋 De Rossi slap
📺 VAR review
😩 Red card
😔 Genoa penalty and equaliser
A moment of madness from Daniele De Rossi costs Roma two crucial points in the Serie A title race... 😡 pic.twitter.com/SF1IhVZ5Ju
• Montella was not the only one to lose his job on Monday morning. Sassuolo bid farewell to Cristian Bucchi following a home defeat to 10-man Verona that leaves them with 11 points from 14 games. He will be replaced by Beppe Iachini, whose previous employment, with Udinese, lasted for half that many league matches before he got the hook.
Results: Bologna 3-0 Sampdoria, Chievo 2-1 SPAL, Sassuolo 0-2 Verona, Cagliari 1-3 Inter, Milan 0-0 Torino, Genoa 1-1 Roma, Udinese 0-1 Napoli, Lazio 1-1 Fiorentina, Juventus 3-0 Crotone. Monday: Atalanta v Benevento.
| Pos | Team | P | GD | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Napoli | 14 | 26 | 38 |
| 2 | Inter Milan | 14 | 18 | 36 |
| 3 | Juventus | 14 | 26 | 34 |
| 4 | Roma | 13 | 15 | 31 |
| 5 | Lazio | 13 | 18 | 29 |
| 6 | Sampdoria | 13 | 9 | 26 |
| 7 | AC Milan | 14 | 1 | 20 |
| 8 | Bologna | 14 | 0 | 20 |
| 9 | Chievo | 14 | -4 | 20 |
| 10 | Torino | 14 | -2 | 19 |
| 11 | Fiorentina | 14 | 4 | 18 |
| 12 | Atalanta | 13 | 1 | 16 |
| 13 | Cagliari | 14 | -11 | 15 |
| 14 | Udinese | 13 | -6 | 12 |
| 15 | Crotone | 14 | -16 | 12 |
| 16 | Sassuolo | 14 | -16 | 11 |
| 17 | Genoa | 14 | -8 | 10 |
| 18 | SPAL | 14 | -11 | 10 |
| 19 | Verona | 14 | -17 | 9 |
| 20 | Benevento | 13 | -27 | 0 |
