The 2023/2024 season ended just under twenty-four hours ago Milan and it did so in a way that effectively summarizes more or less what we have seen since last August. A season in which the Devil succeeded in the titanic feat of giving two points (out of the sixteen total achieved) and five goals to Salernitana, which showed up yesterday at San Siro without a dozen players and has been in Serie B for weeks. A draw which – in case of victory for Inter, engaged in these minutes on the Hellas Verona pitch – will lead Pioli and his boys to finish the Serie A at a sidereal distance of twenty-one points from the Nerazzurri, winners of their twentieth Scudetto.
It certainly doesn’t take a scientist to understand (and above all have the intellectual honesty to say) that the Rossoneri’s year was decidedly insufficient. Sure, they finished second, but Milan were never close to fighting for any of the four competitions in which they participated. Championship already gone in the winter with the collapse at the end of 2023, elimination from the Italian Cup in the Quarter Finals, elimination in the Champions League in the group stages and elimination in the Europa League again in the Quarter Finals against a not irresistible Roma.
Milan, now reset and aim to win
In short, at the end of April – when the highlight of a season begins, the one in which trophies are played for – Milan were already “on holiday”, out of all the games of victory. A season of zero titles, therefore, that it goes along with the previous onewhen the Rossoneri had reached the semi-final of the Champions League (lost badly against Inter), but also fifth “on the pitch” in Serie A and out of the Italian Cup in the Round of 16 at the hands of a Torino with ten men for over a ‘Now.
In short, after the memorable Scudetto in 2022, Milan has embarked on a descending parable which we hope ended against Salernitana. Yesterday, in the pre-match, the Curva Sud displayed an eloquent banner, which goes along with those of recent weeks and which the writer humbly agrees to fully endorse: “There is no positive season without victories. We will never be satisfied.” For the Rossoneri people, the extraordinary Rossoneri people who filled San Siro in every single match, mere “competing” is not and cannot be enough. The balance sheets are in order, the coffers are smiling: we must dare and aim high, for victory.
