GdS: Cigars, clashes and Champions League hurt – Conceicao’s turbulent 63 days

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·6 March 2025

GdS: Cigars, clashes and Champions League hurt – Conceicao’s turbulent 63 days

Sergio Conceicao has only been in charge at AC Milan for 63 days, but it must feel like a lifetime given everything that has happened.

La Gazzetta dello Sport write how Conceicao has experienced joy, anger, desolation and resignation. In two months at Milan, he has lived everything and everything with his soul, without exceptions, probably sometimes exaggerating in involvement and participation.

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Whatever happens, he will remember it as the most difficult experience of his sporting life. He arrived on December 30th and by January 6th he had already won a trophy: Supercoppa Italiana, with comebacks against Juventus and Inter on the way.

How can you grow further, if the Scudetto is unattainable? It is difficult, and in fact the situation quickly deteriorated. Immediately a draw at home to Cagliari, then ups and downs.

A victory in Como, a dismal defeat to Juve, victories against Girona and Parma and a loss in Zagreb, the impressive derby-Roma-Empoli trio and then the elimination by Feyenoord, now three defeats in a row.

The results

In the league, Conceiçao won four games, drawing two and losing two. In the Coppa Italia he got through the quarter-final with a 3-1 win over Roma, one of the best nights of his two months.

The symbol of the crisis, however, is the Champions League. Conceiçao sat on the Milan bench with the last 16 almost in the bag. It would have been enough for him to win against Girona and on the last day against Dinamo Zagreb away.

Instead, he lost in Croatia and in the playoffs he was eliminated by Feyenoord. So Milan are out, tens of millions are missing from the accounts and a dark mood fills the void.

Photos by AC Milan and Marco Luzzani/Getty Images

The mind

Conceiçao has done it his way and left a strong mark, that much is clear. He will not regret having gone slowly. He immediately imposed new rules at Milanello: the mandatory retreat before matches, the isolation of the team at lunch, the obligation to stay longer at the sports center, training with shin guards to increase the intensity.

He took on the players and staff at Milanello head on, he was tough when he thought he had to be and sometimes he got out of hand like the altercation with Davide Calabria after the match with Parma, which remains perhaps the worst page.

Conceicao tried to trigger a reaction in the team, he succeeded in the Superoppa and the symbol are Leao’s words: “Conceiçao gave us energy. He changed the mentality of the team.” However, Milan soon fell back into its defects: little attention and little ruthlessness, individual errors and psychodrama.

The lacklustre approach against Zagreb, the absurd red cards (from Theo versus Feyenoord to the last one by Pavlovic), the bad performances of the star players plus the individual errors of Maignan, Thiaw, Theo and others.

The field

Conceicao also tried to change the way Milan played. No more positionism like under Paulo Fonseca, instead a more aggressive, more conservative approach, less tied to possession.

Above all, many changes have arrived with the winter window. The club bought Santiago Gimenez up front in place of Alvaro Morata, Joao Felix in the attacking midfielder role and Kyle Walker on the right.

Conceiçao has deployed them whenever he could, he has moved Reijnders back 15 metres to accomodate Felix and he has often tried to play with four attacking players. The Fab Four label will remain, no matter how the end of the season goes.

The problem is that, when they have been on the pitch together, they have practically never scored: a goal by Gimenez against Feyenoord from a corner and nothing more. Conceiçao has relied on different men than Fonseca and even Pioli, though nothing really changed.

The future

Now, it is about picking up the pieces and salvaging some pride. The goal is to find team unity to arrive with a different mood on April 2, the day of the first leg of the Coppa Italia derby. At the moment, the only remaining target of the season.

For the first time, Conceiçao has a whole week to work and he has already said it, he will try something new, with a three-man defence being the leading suspect.

In the post-Lazio press conference he did not resign and did not attack the team but rather, he spoke of unity. Of course, it is difficult to work when the club are already openly working on the future, holding interviews for the sporting director and changing its internal balances.

Can you try to build a house while the construction site is already studying the project for the next thing to be built? Conceicao is finding it hard.