Milan will play Europa League football this season, and Gazzetta dello Sport frame it less as an opportunity than as a burden the club could do without.
Milan spent last season out of Europe entirely after a chaotic ninth-place finish, which is precisely why the summer looked the way it did. A full squad rebuild, a new sporting structure, and no midweek games meant Massimiliano Allegri could drill his side on the training ground week after week. That freedom disappears the moment Thursday nights return. Europe brings money and prestige, but it also brings travel, fatigue and a fixture list that has historically wrecked Italian title challenges.
Start with the finances, because the gap is enormous. Europa League qualification is worth €4.31m against €18.6m for the Champions League. A win pays €450k versus €2.1m, a draw €150k versus €700k. Run the full knockout route from the round of 16 to lifting the trophy and you bank around €25m in the Europa League. The equivalent Champions League run is worth roughly €57m before bonuses, and that's before historical coefficient and market pool money widen the chasm further. For context, PSG collected €142m for winning the Champions League in 2025-26, more than five times what a Europa League triumph would return.
That revenue gap is the whole problem, because it directly limits how deep a squad you can build, and squad depth is exactly what a two-competition schedule demands.
The historical record should worry both Milan and Juventus. Since the UEFA Cup became the Europa League in 2009-10, Italian clubs have entered the competition 43 times, and not once has any of them won the Scudetto while juggling Thursday and Sunday. The best returns were second-place finishes, Roma in 2009-10 and 2016-17, Napoli in 2015-16, Milan themselves in 2020-21. Third and fourth place account for a handful more. In the remaining 32 cases, the Italian side finished fifth or lower and missed the Champions League places altogether. The pattern is hard to argue with: the Europa League and a title challenge rarely coexist.
There is a reward at the end of it, of course. Winning the competition books a Champions League spot for the following season plus a place in the Super Cup final. But the field is not soft. Confirmed entrants already include Bayer Leverkusen, Marseille, Real Sociedad, Aston Villa's Premier League neighbours Crystal Palace, Bournemouth and Sunderland, plus Rennes, Hoffenheim, Celta Vigo and AZ Alkmaar, before the Champions League dropouts arrive to make it harder still.
The fan's real question is simple: can Milan actually chase the Scudetto and take Europe seriously at the same time? History says pick one. With a squad that still looks thinner than a genuine two-front campaign requires, Milan's rotation and Allegri's management of minutes may decide whether the Europa League becomes a springboard or the thing that quietly costs them a title.