In the last few days, Milan Futuro has seen the light, the second team of the Rossoneri that will play in Serie C. In the last few hours the broadcaster Milan TV interviewed the coach, Daniel Bonera: “This project, Milan Futuro, was presented to me with the idea of training players and ensuring that these guys grow from a human and obviously footballing point of view and that they are closer to what the first team requires. So this is the main input. Obviously through positive results this path will be more or less simple”.
What will the initial difficulties be?
“We will have difficulties but I believe we are structured, starting from the top. They are giving me all the means to ensure that this path is as smooth as possible, assuming that we are aware that there will be difficulties, but these must give us strength and motivation”.
Your first impressions as coach of Milan Futuro?
“A lot of stimuli. Obviously a lot of emotion for the one that will see me directly responsible for this new project that, moreover, makes me very proud because I will have a great responsibility: that of making the boys grow and ensuring that they can go to the first team and face a little more prepared, more ready, compared to what the Primavera championship offered, which is an intermezzo championship that prepares the youngsters but, in my opinion, they still had a step of difference compared to what is then the need of the first team”.
What are your goals?
“The objective is to help the boys grow. Certainly when this idea was presented to me I welcomed it with great pride, and I believe it is a fundamental step for a company like ours, so ambitious, because Milan Futuro will be something innovative. There will also be room, I believe in the not too distant future, for other teams to enter this category”.
What is the responsibility of coaching Milan Futuro?
“It’s certainly a big responsibility, but it’s something I felt like doing already at the start of the season. I had communicated that it would perhaps be my last season as a collaborator because I felt the desire to deal more directly with the responsibilities. It comes at a time, in a situation, that sees me in an area that I know, because I know Milanello well. I hope to be able to transmit to the boys those values that allowed me to stay at Milan for so long”.
Is having already worked with some of them an added value?
“The added value is having experienced these guys who sporadically trained with us and also had the chance to debut. “To have a relationship with them that is also a little more familiar, to know them perhaps in those facets that a first-team coach perhaps can’t have. I hope that this can be the advantage that I can in a certain sense have with them, and the trust that they can have in me”.
What kind of relationship will you have with the ‘big’ Milan?
“I saw Milan from the outside before arriving, like a dream. When I arrived I understood why a player when he left Milan knew he was leaving something magical. So, without naming names or who left me things, all the coaches I’ve had have left me things, but I’m not just talking about Milan, but I believe that the environment you’re in shapes you in a certain way with values. And I believe that in this Milan is special”.
What synergy do you have in mind?
“The intention is to have a synergy, a team group that doesn’t stop at the 20-25 players of the first team, but that is much larger. So I think the synergy must be there from the beginning, and I think that in this the support of the club, but above all the input of the club, is clear, it is clear to the coach of the first team, to me. So we will have to be good at making sure that a new reality integrates with the existing one and consequently the Primavera make sure that the boys are confronted with a category that is something more than the Primavera”.
The goal for this season?
“I’m a dreamer. The goal is to ensure that the guys who will start with me at the end of the year are in the first team. I think this is my dream but I also think it’s the club’s goal. So the two things go together.”