AC Milan Burns Another Legend as Filippo Inzaghi Faces the Sack

The end of Filippo Inzaghi is near. It’s all but official: another legend immolated at AC Milan.

The Serie A club told BBC Sport earlier in June Inzaghi “will not be in charge of the team next season.” The news comes after months of speculation over his job. Almost on a weekly basis—since January, really—has Inzaghi answered questions about his fate with Milan. He wanted to be their Sir Alex Ferguson. He wanted Milan for life.

“I just hope that I can stay on because I have a lot more to give and these club colours are inside my heart,” Inzaghi told reporters in May, per ESPNFC.

Instead, he is getting the sack after his first year as a senior coach.

Injuries robbed Inzaghi of a regular rotation of players, but the 41-year-old never looked comfortable on the bench. His team did not make any improvements over the course of the season, failing to win more than two games in a row at any given time. The Rossoneri had trouble keeping leads and their heads. Milan racked up a Serie A-high 13 red cards, and on top of that they could not defend against simple set pieces. 

The team did not appear to have full confidence in their coach, either. He didn’t hold his promises: Inzaghi assured Fernando Torres, for example, a new life at Milan. According to the Daily Mail, it was Inzaghi who called up Torres in August and told the Spaniard he would return to greatness at Milan.

Paolo Giovannini/Associated Press

A few months later, Torres left for Atletico Madrid.

"They showed me that they needed me, that they wanted to use me as a key player,” Torres told the press during a Dubai retreat in December (h/t Football Italia). "But after a few months the situation changed." 

Reports of unrest then emerged from La Corriere della Sera after a listless performance against Udinese in April (h/t Football Italia). 

And later, players openly complained about life under Inzaghi.

Cristian Zapata, who managed just eight matches for the Rossoneri, told Spanish newspaper AS it "was a difficult year because the players had problems with Inzaghi and this was reflected on the team,” he said (h/t Football Italia).

It did not help to hear Inzaghi at the post-game press conference. He would praise performances that deserved criticism, and he would take action too late. In one interview with Sky Sport Italia, after conceding a last-minute winner and yet more points in 2-1 loss to Fiorentina, Inzaghi lowered the bar even more: “I could not have asked more from my players,” he said at the time (h/t Football Italia).

Inzaghi had his problems,but he was never set up to succeed. He was handed a weird concoction of players and asked to come up with a working formula. They came from all over the place: on loan, on free transfers, in anything but a permanent capacity. Inzaghi was made to be a patsy, easy to fire despite his long history as a Champions League-winning striker with Milan.

President Silvio Berlusconi did not hesitate to tarnish Inzaghi's credibility, telling a group of reporters his requests to the coach had been ignored, as if wiping his hands of the situation.

Luca Bruno/Associated Press

"I like some of the young players we've got in our youth teams," Berlusconi said, per ESPNFC, "and we've been asking in vain for them to be promoted to the first-team."

The club also kicked Clarence Seedorf to the curb. He had retired on the spot to join Milan as a coach midway through the 2013-14 campaign, and he was fired not long after that.

"We once saw a Milan that honoured its legends,” the Curva Sud ultras group said in a statement, per Football Italia. “Now we see Milan use one of its greatest symbols to hide the rotten core behind it.”

There are no more places for them to hide. Milan and Berlusconi are about to sell off 48 per cent of the club’s shares to Thai businessman Bee Taechaubol and his consortium, according to a press release from Milan’s website. They will have money to use in the transfer market. This is the end of Inzaghi, just when the Rossoneri appear to be serious again.