There is a delicious irony about Milan spending €234m on new talent this summer only for an academy graduate, who cost the club next to nothing, generating much of the excitement at San Siro.
Patrick Cutrone hasn't stopped scoring since joining up with the the first team again in pre-season and is making it incredibly hard for coach Vincenzo Montella to drop him, even after the signings of Andre Silva and Nikola Kalinic.
Down in Calabria on Sunday, the 19-year-old wreaked havoc for Milan - and not just on the pitch. Announcers in the commentary booth at the Ezio Scida were struggling with the new tongue-twister presented by a player called Cutrone playing against Crotone.
Defenders couldn’t get to grips with him either. Cutrone won a penalty, scored a brilliant near-post header from an acute angle and then set up Suso for another goal in a 3-0 win. The handsome victory had Cutrone’s fingerprints all over it, as did the bill at the restaurant upon the team's return home. “In keeping with tradition, dinner tonight is on you,” Milan’s new captain Leonardo Bonucci posted on social media.
It isn't likely to be cheap considering Milan have bought 11 new players this off-season. Then again, if Cutrone keeps scoring at this rate it presumably won’t be long until the club offer him improved terms on the contract he signed in June. With hindsight, the decision to tie him down early looks incredibly prescient of chief executive Marco Fassone and director of sport Massimiliano Mirabelli. Drawn up in June, the move was perhaps sensitive to and informed by the situation that had been allowed to develop around Gigio Donnarumma. Milan, understandably, wished to avoid a repeat.
Sunday’s man-of-the-match display in the south naturally led to questions about Cutrone's future. “Patrick’s officially off the market,” Montella said. A decision on the matter had already been made before the game, such is the promise Cutrone has shown over the last six weeks.
Newly promoted Hellas Verona had made inquiries about taking Cutrone on loan for the season. Bari fancied him to lead their attack in Serie B, but it was Crotone, ironically enough, who showed the most interest of all.
The Pythagorean’s general manager Raffaele Vrenna and Beppe Ursino, their director of sport, had scouted Cutrone in person when Milan played CS U Craiova in the third qualifying round of this year’s Europa League. Cutrone also scored on that occasion, evidently undaunted by the prospect of starting in front of a crowd of 65,763 people, the fourth biggest attendance on record at San Siro in August.
By prodding home a cross in the midst of a goalmouth scramble, the teenager became Milan’s youngest goalscorer in Europe since Alexandre Pato. And if some are wondering why Cutrone started Milan’s first European game in three and a half years, it was because his manager wanted to reward the kid from Como for the big impression he’d already made on him in pre-season.
Cutrone had found the net in Milan's first friendly of the summer against Lugano, opening the scoring after some neat combination play with Franck Kessie. But in truth the game that really made everyone stand up and pay attention was the 4-0 win over Bayern Munich in Shenzen, when Cutrone bagged a brace.
For Milan fans of a certain generation it brought back memories of watching Graziano Mannari score in a friendly against Real Madrid back in 1988. Mannari was also 19 at the time and got everybody excited with his display at the Bernabeu. But despite scoring one of the best goals you’ll ever see in a game against Juventus that season, his career unfortunately never took off and offers a cautionary tale at a time when the hype around Cutrone is building.
Inevitably, the papers are already portraying him as a predestinato; someone destined for greatness. Of players born in 1998, only two have scored and assisted a goal in the same game in Europe's top five leagues. One is Christian Pulisic of Borussia Dortmund. The other is Cutrone.
Spotted playing five-a-side for Paradiense by one of Milan’s talent scouts, Luigi Rampoldi, the seven-year-old Cutrone received an invite to try out with the Rossoneri. He scored four in trial game and the rest is history. Mauro Bianchessi, Milan’s former chief of scouting from age 14 and under, was left in no doubt about his potential. “Goals are in his DNA.”
Over the years it didn’t matter who Cutrone faced, his name invariably ended up in lights. Derby della Madonnina? He scored. Germany Under-15s? He netted a hat-trick. Barcelona? OK, they beat Milan 3-2 in the final of the Torneo Gaetano Scirea. But it wasn’t for a lack of trying on Cutrone's part. He struck twice. With all that in mind, you have to say the manner in which he's taken his chances this summer - scoring on his European debut and first start in Serie A - has done little to discourage talk of Milan’s youth system producing another first-team star.
Whatever you make of the tail-end of the Berlusconi era, the decision to place greater emphasis on Milan's academy, six months before the sales of Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Thiago Silva to PSG, is now bearing fruit. Aware that he could no longer keep up with the oligarchs and the sheikhs, austerity begot autarky. Berlusconi remembered that when he bought Milan in 1986, its academy had produced or was in the process of producing players like Franco Baresi, Billy Costacurta, Paolo Maldini, Filippo Galli and Demetrio Albertini. The time had come for it to start pumping out greatness again and, over the last two years at least, it has furnished the first team with some top talent.
Bianchessi is the one responsible for finding Donnarumma. He discovered Manuel Locatelli and Cutrone. In 2016, 39 Milan players recruited by Bianchessi received call ups to the Italy Under-15 and Under-19 squads.
In June, Milan's Under-16s won the Scudetto. Their No.10 just so happens to be a Maldini. Daniel Maldini, son of Paolo, who may play in a different position to his famous father but sure knows how to time a tackle as Clarence Seedorf found out a decade ago.
The Milan Gold initiative launched last year - the club’s first major attempt at innovation since the days of MilanLab. It selects 16 of the most promising players from the academy and, in addition to putting on extra, tailor-made sessions for them, involves training with a ‘learning machine’, which supposedly helps these star students reach their goals in as little time as possible. Crucially the programme is designed to bridge the gap between youth and first team, which has been a big problem in Italy over the last decade. The latest generation coming through is to some extent papering over it with their talent.
Now there is some debate about whether staying at Milan is what’s best for Cutrone this season. In terms of status, he's third choice behind Silva and Kalinic, who, when all's said and done, are expected to cost the club €63m. But then as Montella says, “the top clubs all have three strikers,” and Cutrone is adding competition for places. In particular he's keeping the €38m Silva on his toes.
With Milan planning on going deep in the Europa League, there should be enough games to go around. Cutrone should be proud. He's the big winner of this pre-season at Milan. Role models Alvaro Morata and Andrea Belotti were on the club's radar this summer. Cutrone is leading Milan's line instead. He can hardly believe it.
Talking at the academy’s Christmas Party last December, Cutrone said: “Coming to San Siro never gets old. I dream of playing here one day.” Dreams can come true.
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