The story regarding the cooling break saga involving Theo Hernandez and Rafael Leao continues to spill over, and a report has even questioned how long they will be at AC Milan for.
La Gazzetta dello Sport begin by asking the question: ‘Now what will happen?’. Theo and Leao are pillars of Milan and there is no doubt about it, the club are aware of it, they have been here since 2019 and remain top players in their respective roles.
However, if we look a little deeper, there are some question marks. Theo has an agreement with the Rossoneri that expires in June 2026 and Zlatan Ibrahimovic claimed a couple of weeks ago that fans should not be worried about a potential contract extension.
“For their renewal, everything is under control. They know what we want, we know what they want. It can be resolved in a minute or maybe a little more, but there is no rush,” he said, when asked about Theo and also Mike Maignan.
Both the full-back and the goalkeeper are starters for France and have the eyes of many top clubs on them, and this will especially be the case if they have a year left on their contract. It is also obvious that both expect a pay rise.
Is Milan still their priority? From Maignan in the summer there were positive signals in this sense, from Theo less so. It is no mystery that in June he had a thought about saying goodbye, when he said at the European Championship: “Will I stay at Milan? We’ll see later.”
Theo’s somewhat cryptic statement came at a time when it seemed like Bayern Munich in particular were interested. Alphonso Davies was expected to head to Real Madrid, with the Frenchman ending up in Bavaria, but the former never happened and therefore neither did the latter.
Hernandez thus remained at Milan, just like Rafael Leao, who has been courted in vain by Barcelona in recent days. The Portuguese signed a contract extension just over a year ago, moving the expiry date to 2028 and significantly raising his salary, which has become the highest in the entire squad.
At the same time, the agreement included a release clause of €175m to be paid in three instalments (one per year). It is a very high figure, which for now is considered too high by all of Leao’s admirers, given that no club has shown interest in paying it.
Rafa, who will soon become the father of twins, is tied to the city of Milano and to AC Milan as a club, but in the future never say never.
