As twitterarti say, Thiago Silva and A.C.milan is a bettee love story than twilight. Sold in 2012 by Silvio to balance the books to then recent moneybags PSG for €42M a return for Thiago to Milan is always rumoured every summer.
With Thiago approaching the fag end of his career, and his contract expiring this season with PSG it presents an opportunity for many clubs including Milan to sign him on a free.
With huge changes expected with Rangnick expected to meet Elliot group in London to formalise his agreement (nothing is official yet) a huge change is expected to be ushered in and the team to be drilled as per the tactical styles professed by Der professor it looks very unlikely that 36 year old Silva would be a good signing. Let us examine 4 reasons why.
1. Tactically Unfit For Gegenpress
In this example below we can see how high Upamecano is up the pitch with the ball against Mainsz 05 (This move led to a goal). The basic idea of Gegenpress is to press high as possible and win the ball deep in the opponents’ third. This requires the last line of defenders to press very high up the pitch as even almost higher beyond the half way of the field. This makes the team susceptible to quick counter attacks and hence defenders are forced to track back.
While Thiago Silva is positionally adept, playing a high line against quick pacy forwards and maintaining shape would be an extremely difficult task for him at 36 years old. Not only has he lost his pace but he is far from mobile like how he used to be during his days at milan. Opposite teams would identify him as a weak link and exploit his lack of pace.
2. Recovery between games and Rangnick’s youth philosophy
Rangnick when interviewed by coaches’ voice said this about youth “Nowadays at the age of 15 or 16 the young players are trained at a high level of performance, both physically and mentally. As a result they have three advantages over older players. Firstly they recover a lot faster from their exertions between games. Secondly their capacity to learn is higher, one of the privileges of youth”
Approaching 36 years of age Thiago Silva would find it extemely difficult to keep up with the high intensity football professed by Rangnick and it could lead to a lot of injuries. Not to mention the room for learning is also very less given he will be at Milan only for 1-2 years.
3. Financially challenging
At PSG Silva takes a wage of €12M per season (gross). With Milans finances a complete mess and a salary cap rumoured to be on the way, it would not make sense for Milan to employ someone who takes a huge salary only for 1-2 years. If Milan pay huge wages and do not qualify for the champions league the investment like umpteen others would turn our to be a bad one and Thiago Silva would leave Milan for free with nobody ready to buy him and redeem the investment we made on his wages.
Even if Thiago Silva takes a 50% pay cut it would mean he still takes €6M salary (€3M gross) only to be integrated into a tactical set up that could be Ill suited to his style of play as well as physical demands. And with a cash crunch it would be better to channel the salary to a younger player who could make a positive difference and redeem the investment.
4. Long term thinking
How many times have Milan paid the price for short term thinking or “quick fixes” and traversed this continuing banter era ? Milan are yet to replace their departing legends like Kaka, Shevchenko, Maldini, Zlatan and even Thiago Silva himself. Thiago Silva represents 1-2 seasons more at best and beyond that he would retire or continue in his homeland. If Milan are to create a cycle for everlasting success then Milan should create a core that will be able to contribute towards the club for a long time.
With Rangnick at the helm, he would help Milan bring in youth who are technically gifted and help them to shape their future creating the aforementioned core for everlasting success.
Concluding Remarks
Milan have been recently linked to PSG prodigy Tanguy Kouassi for a free transfer and it looks like Milan are looking on to build a cycle with young talented players. Time will tell if it is a successful approach
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