Legendary Milan defender Alessandro Costacurta has said Samuel Chukwueze and his teammates and not head coach Sergio Conceição are to blame for their exit in this season’s UEFA Champions League.
Conceição also singled out Theo Hernandez, who he feels is having the ‘worst’ year of his career.
Chukwueze came on with seven minutes left as Milan were dumped out from the Champions League in the play-off round after a 1-1 draw with an injury-hit and relatively inexperienced Feyenoord side, which sealed a 2-1 loss on aggregate.
The seven-time Champions League winners had led in the first minute after former Feyenoord striker Santiago Gimenez opened the scoring in the second leg.
But holding onto the lead became difficult when Hernandez was sent off early in the second half.
The Frenchman was shown a yellow card for an unnecessarily aggressive shirt pull on Anis Anis Hadj-Moussa in the first half, and was then given his second booking for simulation.
Costacurta feels that Theo has a lot of questions to ask of himself.
“I haven’t seen that many mistakes in a double knockout game for a long time,” Costacurta said while on punditry duty with Sky, reported via Corriere dello Sport.
“Certain blunders like those Theo made can’t happen at this level, it’s not acceptable. This year is perhaps the worst of his career and what he did tonight was the icing on the cake for Milan.”
He continued: “It’s not unreasonable to say that the blame for Milan’s elimination from the Champions League falls on Theo Hernandez. It’s not Conceicao’s fault, who, in my opinion, didn’t make a mistake in his team selection. The mistakes were made by the players, and they made serious ones in every game.”
