Sergio Conceição Reflects on His Milan Tenure and Challenges Ahead for Amorim

Sergio Conceição doesn’t sugar-coat his Milan story. He never has.

Looking back on his brief spell at San Siro, the former Rossoneri coach is clear on two things: it “didn’t go well” by Milan standards, and the man on the touchline is far from the club’s only problem.

‘It won’t be easy for Amorim’

Now watching from the outside, Conceição has a warning for the new man in charge, Rubem Amorim.

“I send him a big hug and wish him good luck on this new journey, which won't be easy at all, especially because of the atmosphere at the club,” he said on DAZN’s Portuguese Champions League coverage. “There's a lot of pressure, people think they should be winning the league and Champions League every year.”

That pressure chewed him up quickly.

Conceição arrived midway through the 2024-25 season and started with a bang, lifting the Supercoppa Italiana within his first two games. For a moment, it looked like a revival. A trophy in his hands, a jolt of optimism in the stands.

Then the league table told a different story.

Milan slid to a dismal eighth-place finish in Serie A, missing out on European football for 2025-26 altogether. For a club that still measures itself against the continent’s elite, that kind of collapse leaves scars.

‘I wouldn’t say it went well…’

Conceição doesn’t hide from that.

“I was in Milan for six months and things went … I wouldn't say well, but we managed to win a Super Cup and got to the final of the Coppa Italia,” he reflected.

The Coppa Italia run ended in defeat to Bologna in Rome, Conceição walking past the trophy at the Stadio Olimpico as another near-miss in a season that never quite settled.

Yet he is adamant that his own shortcomings are only part of a wider pattern.

“Amorim mentioned recently that Milan have won two league titles in 20 years and that is true. One of their two most recent trophies was mine,” he pointed out, referencing the Supercoppa Italiana. “And it's been confirmed that the coach is not the problem. Obviously, I take my fair share of the blame and I don't want to shy away from my responsibilities, but we've now seen Allegri and the whole management team fall.”

Allegri era fails to shift the narrative

Milan turned to a serial winner to reset the project. Massimiliano Allegri replaced Conceição for the 2025-26 campaign, backed by a season with no European distractions and a squad that spent long stretches of the year sitting second in the table.

It still unraveled.

Allegri’s side faded to fifth, an underwhelming finish that cost him his job and took the club’s hierarchy with him. Sporting director Igli Tare, technical director Geoffrey Moncada and CEO Giorgio Furlani were all dismissed the day after the season ended.

For Conceição, that sequence only strengthens his argument: the dugout is not the only fault line at Milan.

The expectations remain the same. The pressure remains the same. The coaches keep changing.

Now it’s Amorim stepping into that storm at San Siro, inheriting a club that still believes it should live at the summit of Serie A and deep in the Champions League every year, but has just two league titles in two decades to show for it.

Conceição has lived that reality. Amorim is about to find out what it really means.