Giacomo Bonaventura admits he didn’t want to leave Milan and felt there was a ‘lack of faith’ in him. ‘Perhaps the Milan Style has changed.’
The midfielder is a free agent, as he was not offered a new contract after 10 years at San Siro.
“I still had much more to give, but I’ve seen everything at Milan as a player and a man,” he told La Gazzetta dello Sport magazine Sportweek.
Giacomo Bonaventura admits he didn’t want to leave Milan and felt there was a ‘lack of faith’ in him. ‘Perhaps the Milan Style has changed.’
The midfielder is a free agent, as he was not offered a new contract after 10 years at San Siro.
“I still had much more to give, but I’ve seen everything at Milan as a player and a man,” he told La Gazzetta dello Sport magazine Sportweek.
“It’s disappointing that I was never able to work with the same coach for three or four years, because that does give a sense of consistency to your work. Instead, every new coach seems to be testing you, it’s always starting from scratch, and that wastes a lot of time.
“I realised the way I was viewed had changed after my knee injury. I needed surgery and would only return in the final year of my contract.
“A club that has faith in you, that really believes in you, offers a contract renewal the moment a player returns to the field. In my case, that did not happen. There was no clarity.
“Perhaps the Milan Style has changed, but I got the feeling that I was not seen the same way after that injury.”
Nonetheless, Bonaventura remains highly-respected by the Rossoneri fans, especially after he went into the centre-circle of San Siro following his final game and openly wept.
“I hadn’t prepared it, I just waited for everyone to leave the field so I could take some time to myself, look around and remember. I saw the stadium completely empty and it looked huge. I knelt down, an intimate moment where it was just me and San Siro. I felt gratitude for all I’d experienced there.
“It was my childhood dream to play at San Siro, so having done that with Milan was fantastic.”
Jack looks back over his Rossoneri career and recalls a particularly tense clash with coach Gennaro Gattuso.
“He made me feel important and I gave my heart and soul for him, proving that he could trust me. Having said that, one time we didn’t want to go into a training retreat and we ended up just me and him, head-to-head, arguing in a room. He wanted to kill me!
“That’s Rino, though, he gets furious at the time, but it ends there and he doesn’t hold grudges.”
Like many of his teammates, Bonaventura points to the importance of January signing Zlatan Ibrahimovic.
“When he arrived, he brought the kind of enthusiasm and hunger that we’d been missing for some time. I wasn’t in good shape after the injury, but when I saw Zlatan walk through the door, it made me want to break every barrier.
“We were the oldest in the squad, but he always joked I was older than him, even though I’m not! Zlatan earned everyone’s respect with hard work and performances on the field.
“He’s intelligent, good fun, and you know that he can be relied upon to take care of things during difficult moments. Working with Ibra in training is like an earthquake, you have to be on your toes.”