As La Gazzetta dello Sport write, Conceicao definitely didn’t imagine his curtain call to be this way. When he landed on planet Milan on December 30, the hope was to stay at least as long as his contract stipulated, that is until June 2026.
Instead, tomorrow’s match at San Siro against Monza will be his last game in red and black. In fact, not even technically: the Portuguese is suspended after the red card he received in the Roma defeat on Sunday evening and will be replaced by his assistant, Joao Costa
It will be a farewell that he isn’t even in the dug out for, then, and most likely in silence. No pre-match press conference today and it’s hard to believe that Conceiçao will even appear at the microphones after the match.
The words after the defeat against the Giallorossi risk being the last declarations of Conceiçao as Milan coach, and it felt like he wanted to fight his own corner a bit after a rollercoaster five months.
“I have been thinking since day one. I have looked at the numbers since I arrived, since the first game. And before this defeat we were in the quartet of teams on Champions League pace [points per game] with Roma, Napoli and Inter,” he said.
“Was it a good season? Obviously not. And today’s [vs. Roma] is a game that fully represents what I have experienced in these five months: many negative incidents, small and large.”
Under Conceicao, Milan have collected 33 points in 19 games. As many as Atalanta in the same period of time, but less than Roma (46), Inter (38), Napoli (38) and Juventus (35). Conceiçao tries to defend his work, even though it is impossible for him to escape a naturally negative balance.
A year like this for a historic team like Milan is not good, then everyone has to evaluate their own work and I am always demanding with myself. The club will also evaluate what has been done,” he would add.
Regarding the club’s considerations, there will be no surprises. Winning the Coppa Italia was the last lifeline for Conceiçao, whose fate was therefore sealed at 23:00 CEST on 14 May, when Bologna lifted the trophy and the Rossoneri collected the silver medal.
The final blow came a few days later with the defeat against Roma – again at the Olimpico, the stadium that was Sergio’s home as a player at Lazio – which sanctioned Milan’s exclusion from Europe in 2025-26
In recent weeks, Conceiçao has repeatedly anticipated that one day he will tell his version of the difficult months at Milan. Who knows if he will do it in detail later, as he keeps on threatening to do.
For now, only the cold numbers remain, which perhaps do not tell the whole story, but they photograph the reality. Since 2015-16, when he took over as coach of Vitoria Guimaraes, the Portuguese coach had not finished outside the top eight in the league.
At Porto, the other big team in his career on the bench, he had always finished in the top three places in the standings. Of course, Italy is not Portugal and the situations are not comparable, but Sergio’s experience in Milan as a coach will not be remembered in the annals.
And perhaps it will not even remain in the heart of the direct protagonist. No, he would not have imagined it after that cigar smoked in the locker room in Riyadh…
