Why Giacomo Bonaventura Is the Player AC Milan Can't Afford to Lose This Summer

In an up-and-down season, one thing—one player—has been a constant for AC Milan.

That constant is Giacomo Bonaventura—and he's the one player the Rossoneri simply cannot afford to lose in the coming summer transfer window.

The 26-year-old has been at Milan for two years now.  He arrived at the end of the 2014 summer transfer window for a relatively low fee of €7 million.  The product of several small clubs and then Atalanta's youth team, he made his debut for La Dea on May 4, 2008.  

After making a pair of short loan spells over the next two seasons, he stuck in Bergamo for good in 2010-11, when the team had dropped to Serie B.  He scored his first goal for the team in November of that year, and ended it with nine goals and five assists.  His performance helped his team to the Serie B title and promotion after only a year in the second tier.

Bonaventura became an integral part of Atalanta.  From the time be became a regular in Serie B, he played no less than 31 league games in any given season, scoring a total of 14 goals.

His performances attracted attention on the transfer market, and Milan snapped him up on the last day of the summer window in 2014. 

It was easily the best signing of that window.

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There were at least three other signings that made a significant impact on Milan last season.  Jeremy Menez was the team's leading scorer, Alex became a consistent presence in the center of defense and Diego Lopez may have been the team's best player overall.

But none of them projects to have as much of a long-term impact as Bonaventura.  Menez has been on the bench with injuries for much of the year.  Alex is at the end of his career.  Lopez couldn't replicate his form from last year, and those struggles plus an injury saw him lose his place in the starting XI to teenage phenom Gianluigi Donnarumma.

But Bonaventura has remained a constant.  He's played a total of 65 games over his two seasons with Milan, and his impact has never waned.  He's scored almost as many times for Milan in those 65 games (14 in league play) than he did in 104 for Atalanta (17).

As the season wore on, it became abundantly clear just how important Bonaventura is.  One of Milan's biggest weaknesses this year has been the lack of creativity in their attack.  Whether he's played on the left side of midfield, as a winger or as a trequartista, the Italian has been Milan's lone creative outlet.

According to WhoScored.com, he averaged 2.1 key passes, 2.3 successful dribbles and 3.2 shots per match, the team leader in every category.  He's also the leader in assists with eight—twice as much as the next player on the list.  His six goals are second only to Carlos Bacca on the scoring list.  

In almost every area, Bonaventura is Milan's biggest threat—and possibly the only real one.

He only missed two games before injuries to his thigh and hip sidelined him for what may be the rest of the season, but those two matches ended up being two of Milan's worst.

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The first, a November 6 home game against Bonaventura's old club Atalanta, was probably the worst of the two.  

WhoScored's stats showed how surprising the result was.  The provincial side controlled 58.2 percent of possession and outshot their hosts 15-8.  Only a string of world-class saves from teenager Donnarumma allowed Milan to escape the San Siro with a draw.

Against Udinese three months later, Milan's struggles took a different form.  According to WhoScored, they controlled the game, holding 61.4 percent of possession and outshot the Friuli outfit 22-9, but only five of those 22 shots found the target.  That speaks to a lack of quality chances for Milan's forwards.  

As accurate as players like Bacca have been this year for Milan, if their teammates don't get them into good positions, they won't score.

Since Bonaventura's injury, things have only got worse.  Against bottom side Hellas Verona two weeks ago, Milan was outshot 28-11 by WhoScored's count, and not even another herculean effort from Donnarumma could keep them from a late-game humiliation, losing 2-1 on the final kick of the match.

Their struggles last weekend against another relegation candidate Frosinone was of the Udinese variety.  WhoScored clocked them at 24 shots to their opposition's nine, but 13 of them were either off-target or blocked.  It took a miraculous overhead kick and a penalty to salvage a 3-3 draw.

It's clear the team looks utterly lost without Bonaventura on the field.  They can't put their strikers into position to score, and because of that, they can't put bad teams away—and sometimes they can't even compete with them in the first place.

Milan simply cannot afford to lose Bonaventura this summer.  Selling him and replacing him with another creative player isn't an option—it would simply be the same problem with different players.  

What they must do is retain their playmaker and add to him, relieving some of the pressure to create and divide the attention of opposing defenses.

Over the last two years, Bonaventura has proved himself to be indispensable.  If they add to him over the summer, they could go a long way toward eliminating a key weakness.  But if they were to allow him to leave, they could stall their efforts to regain their old place at the top of the table.