Why Giacomo Bonaventura Is the Player AC Milan Can’t Afford to Lose This Summer

In an up-and-down season, one thing—one player—has been a constant for AC Milan.

That constant is Giacomo Bonaventura—and he’s the one player the Rossoneri simply cannot afford to lose in the coming summer transfer window.

The 26-year-old has been at Milan for two years now.  He arrived at the end of the 2014 summer transfer window for a relatively low fee of €7 million.  The product of several small clubs and then Atalanta’s youth team, he made his debut for La Dea on May 4, 2008.  

After making a pair of short loan spells over the next two seasons, he stuck in Bergamo for good in 2010-11, when the team had dropped to Serie B.  He scored his first goal for the team in November of that year, and ended it with nine goals and five assists.  His performance helped his team to the Serie B title and promotion after only a year in the second tier.

Bonaventura became an integral part of Atalanta.  From the time be became a regular in Serie B, he played no less than 31 league games in any given season, scoring a total of 14 goals.

His performances attracted attention on the transfer market, and Milan snapped him up on the last day of the window in 2014. 

It was easily the best signing of that window.

There were at least three other signings that made a significant impact on Milan last season.  Jeremy Menez was the team’s leading scorer, Alex became a consistent presence in the center of defense and Diego Lopez may have been the team’s best player overall.

But none of them projects to have as much of a long-term impact as Bonaventura.  Menez has been on the bench with injuries for much of the year.  Alex is at the end of his career.  Lopez couldn’t replicate his form from last year, and those struggles plus an injury saw him lose his place in the starting XI to teenage phenom Gianluigi Donnarumma.

But …

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