With the mercato shut, Ruben Amorim can now shape Milan around his own ideas, and La Gazzetta dello Sport lays out the five challenges that will define the season.
The window itself was an odd one. Gazzetta note that Milan spent heavily early and did little at the close, ending on a roughly €150m outlay with no Italian signings and only one player taken from Serie A. What follows is Amorim's problem to solve on the pitch.
The first question is Luka Modric. He remains a central midfielder, but the demands change sharply from how Massimiliano Allegri deployed him. Sitting as a regista behind a deep block with two men alongside is one job; covering ground in a 3-4-2-1 with one fewer midfielder for company is another. Gazzetta expect Amorim to manage and protect him with heavy rotation, much as Real Madrid did in his final season in Spain.
Youth is the second thread, and it is a deliberate one. Milan have built a squad where young players sit as first alternatives rather than emergency options. Amorim has said plainly that if Gonçalo Ramos is unavailable, Francesco Camarda starts. The same logic covers Sankhoun Diawara, fifth in line among the centre-backs, and to a degree Christian Comotto, who has climbed the midfield order since Samuele Ricci left. Lorenzo Torriani is Mike Maignan's official deputy. Knowing when to play a teenager, when to hold him back and how to prepare him is, as Gazzetta frame it, a delicate transition.
The style is the third. Gerry Cardinale set the tone early with "We play to win, not to avoid losing," and Amorim needed little persuading, since it matches his own football. Milan took risks against Torino and Venezia, winning 3-2 rather than settling for 1-0. The test arrives in the congested run of December and January, with Sunderland, Napoli, Como, Monza, Fiorentina and Roma in sequence and no rest between them. Holding that balance across games every three days is the hard part.
Rotation is the fourth, and it carries a stack of open questions. Is Moreira a winger or an attacking midfielder? Can Samuel Chukwueze feature every week? Where does Alphadjo Cisse fit when Christian Pulisic returns? Can Matteo Gabbia cope with the space behind a high line? Amorim will answer these month by month, and Gazzetta predict heavy rotation and players used across multiple positions, with Gila, Adrien Rabiot, Ramos and perhaps Strahinja Pavlović the closest to fixed.
Leadership is the last. None of the departures were leaders, which sharpens the focus on those who stayed. Gila, brought in to fill the gap left when Fikayo Tomori looked set to move on before returning to the fold, has the character to grow into it. Maignan and Rabiot remain the dressing-room anchors, with Modric a quieter guide and Gabbia carrying the Milan identity. Each, Gazzetta note, is coming off a troubled summer of their own.
Whether that group can carry the team through nine months is the open thread running under all five challenges, and the answer starts with how Amorim handles the December pile-up.