Pioli offers clarification after claiming Milan are not far from level of Real Madrid and Man City | OneFootball

This season has been one to forget for AC Milan for several reasons. Falling to Inter twice, humiliatingly in both games, albeit for separate reasons, is a fantastic summary of a poor season that has been difficult for the majority.

Ahead of the season, expectations for Milan were high after a fantastic mercato. However, the season did not follow these aims, and even when secondary objectives were set, they were not met, shining an unavoidable light on the man at the helm of things – Stefano Pioli.

It has been a season where ‘Pioli Out’ has been a regularity, and on several occasions, he has seemed close to losing his job. Still, after weeks (if not months) of the cycle, the management deemed that a decision would be made at the end of the season as long as there were no drastic reasons for an early conclusion.

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Nevertheless, after standards continued to fall and results in big games did not improve, the reality became clear. The parties will split after a season where Milan look likely to finish second, but the season will not be remembered for this.

Pioli clarified his comments in his pre-match press conference after previously drawing comparisons between the Rossoneri, Real Madrid and Manchester City.

Having seen the Europa League matches yesterday, very sincerely speaking – given that you were made fun of a bit for that comparison to Real Madrid and City – in your opinion are Milan, objectively, are not far from those heights that they have reached, in addition to Roma, also Bayer Leverkusen and Atalanta?

“I was also made fun of because I said that Atalanta was one of the favourites to win the Europa League. I was referring to the fact that only a year ago we were reached the semi-finals of the Champions League, and then the fact of being eliminated by Inter had diminished the importance of having reached such an important goal.

“If you talk to me about this year, this year we have shown that we are clearly far from them teams, but I believe that Milan in the future, based on the investments they can make, I believe that this is a good team, but I don’t want to talk about the future because I think it’s more important for me to be focused on tomorrow’s match, we’ll see about the season finale and then about the future.

“However, we are not far from Atalanta. Our regret this year was the two matches against Roma, absolutely, because we too could have gone to the semi-final against Bayer Leverkusen. The fact that I then said that these two reached the final was because the quality of the team and the coaches are high.”