Rúben Amorim's Controversial Plane-Crash Analogy at Press Conference
Rúben Amorim walked into his Friday press conference intending to talk about Lazio, training standards and a fast-rising teenager. He ended up having to pull back a comparison that jarred the room.
Exactly 25 years on from the terrorist attacks in the United States, the AC Milan head coach used aeroplane crashes as an analogy for how his side must learn from mistakes, before quickly realising how it sounded on this particular date.
“We have to get better during every training session,” Amorim said, outlining his demands ahead of Saturday’s trip to Lazio.
“It’s just like with plane crashes,” he went on. “That’s where you learn…”
The sentence hung there. Amorim paused, then caught himself.
“This is not a good comparison,” he admitted with a nervous laugh, clearly aware of the sensitivity of the day.
He tried to steer the point back to football.
“But you understand what I mean. If something goes wrong, we absorb all the information and apply it in training.”
From there, the focus turned to one of the brightest stories of Milan’s start to the season: Alphadjo Cissè.
The 19-year-old, who last winter came particularly close to a move to PSV, has exploded into Serie A with Milan, scoring twice in his first three league matches. His stunning strike against Juventus underlined his technical quality and composure on a big stage, and Italian media now expect he has an excellent chance of earning his first national team call-up next week.
Amorim did not hold back in his assessment.
“He is ready for it,” the Portuguese coach said. “But he needs time to mature.”
The Milan boss has already noticed a split in the teenager’s performances.
“I saw a difference between his performances in away matches and at San Siro,” Amorim explained. “San Siro is a difficult environment, so he has to adapt to all those small details.”
That is the tightrope for any prodigy in Milan colours: the talent is obvious, the setting unforgiving.
“Let’s give Cissè time,” Amorim urged. “If he trains and plays with the national team, he will not be shy and will demand the ball. He is ready for it, but needs time to grow into the player he can be. He still has a lot to learn.”
Milan head to Rome with a coach demanding lessons from every setback and a teenager suddenly staring at the threshold of international football. The question now is how quickly Cissè can turn promise into permanence under the San Siro spotlight.
