There has been a lot of talk surrounding Charles De Ketelaere and what is working so well at Atalanta compared to what didn’t work in his first season at AC Milan.
Calciomercato.com highlight the staggering contrast in numbers for De Ketelaere in his first two seasons in Italy. In 2022-23 he made 40 appearances for Milan, with zero goals one assist and three yellows, in contrast to 26 appearances at Atalanta with nine goals, seven assists and zero yellow cards.
The young Belgian is showing everyone his talent after an enigmatic season with the Rossoneri and at the moment the Bergamo club seem almost certain to use their €23m option to buy, which added to the €3m loan fee means a minimum of €26m for Milan.
How do Milan feel about things? They paid €32m plus €3m in bonuses to sign him from Club Brugge in the 2022 summer window, making him the marquee signing after winning the Scudetto and even giving him a five-year deal worth €2.2m net per year.
On 30 June 2024 the residual cost of the 22-year-old’s contract will be around €20m meaning that – in addition to the savings on wages – the figures of the deal with La Dea were engineered to generate a capital gain of around €6m.
Stefano Pioli, who was able to make the most of all the new young players he had at his disposal, was not able to bring the best out of De Ketelaere.
The Milan boss turned Theo Hernandez to Rafael Leao into two of the best in the world in their positions, he transformed Pierre Kalulu into a centre-back after Simon Kjaer’s injury, and he tried everything with De Ketelaere too.
He used him as an attacking midfielder behind Olivier Giroud, as a pure midfielder with freedom to move along the entire frontline and then even at times in a front two.
There were no real signs of life, but in Bergamo – with Gian Piero Gasperini making the same move – playing at a club with less pressure allowed the Belgian to make a breakthrough. After all, the Gewiss Stadium is not San Siro, and that is why there are no regrets.
