Milan are losing what we hoped was a strong grip on a return
to Champions League for next year. Lost, too, are the hopes and dreams of
Milanisti everywhere. But also completely lost is Gattuso. All along his
journey as first team coach, he has struggled with tactics and systems and
lineups. For a while, Milan survived on his grinta alone. The players swore
their allegiance to him and their work ethic showed, even when the results didn’t
come. But when the going got tough, he became more and more stubborn, until he
lost not only matches, but also lost the team. In desperation, he’s thrown the
whole team into ritiro… again. It’s so obvious that he’s simply losing it.
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| From bad to better to bad again |
First, there was Benevento. After everyone was shocked that
Gattuso was chosen to replace Montella, Gattuso gave Benevento their first ever
Serie A point in a draw where the goalkeeper scored the equalizer. It disappointed
even his most optimistic supporters. But it was only the beginning. Even though it seemed very evident that
tactics were not his strong point, he slowly infused his trademark grinta
into the team. Slowly but surely, with many bumps in the road, he gave this
team something they hadn’t had in years: an identity.
There were glorious victories, even though the football
was often terrible. There were injury crises, possibly from his tough training sessions, yet from those kinds of trials came some
of our strongest runs. Even the most skeptical fan had to give him credit for
what he was doing with the team. Milan finished sixth on the table again last
season, but statistics showed that without Montella’s complete collapse earlier in the season, the
team under Gattuso would have finished higher. That was enough to have him
confirmed for this season, and it was difficult to argue that he shouldn’t have
been, particularly when there weren’t a lot of better, affordable options. This season had its ups and downs, but was arguably one of our most impressive seasons in years. We
were as high as third this season, just over two months ago, yet now we will be
lucky to maintain seventh.
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| When times were better |
Everyone always said that he would max out. That he might
get us to the Champions League, but probably not much further. And he nearly
did. Well technically, he still could, if all of the results for all of the
teams above us in the next four games go our way. But that would include our
results. And he has clearly lost his team at this point, which is why the team
are in that good old useless ritiro again. When he put the team in ritiro near the
beginning of his spell as coach, it didn’t work either. So if this is the end
of the road for him, as everyone speculates, it’s a fitting bookend to
demonstrate how he has and has not grown as a coach. Everything we thought he
accomplished is unravelling and his desperation and stubbornness are doing the
same for him now as they did in the beginning. Only this time, he likely won’t
have more time to prove himself.
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| So painful to watch another legend go down |
The biggest crime is that in the middle, he gave the team
not only an identity, but hope. He kept the team calm through yet another change
in both ownership and management, and managed to keep the team focused through so many more
changes in the squad and all of the off the pitch drama. He started as a joke, then turned
the joke on all of us in the most beautiful of ways. His press conferences have
always been refreshingly honest, but lately, they make me sad. Because along
with our Champions League hopes and dreams, he has lost the team and lost his
way. He’s lashing out at players and trying to grasp for straws to find someone or something else to blame. But in the end, it has always been his stubbornness
and unwillingness to change his ways that cost him (and us) everything. Sadly,
the coach that no one believed could proved us all wrong and then proved us
right again. Not only are Milan and all of us fans losing all of our Champions League hopes and
dreams, not only will we likely lose one of the surprisingly best coaches we’ve had in
years, but Gattuso himself is losing it.
This post inspired by the music of NIN’s
“Hurt”
Our next match is
Serie A Week 35
Milan vs. Bologna
Monday, May 6 • 20:30
CEST (2:30pm EDT)