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Fikayo Tomori

It did not take long for Zlatan Ibrahimovic to decide he liked what he saw during Fikayo Tomori’s AC Milan debut in last month’s Coppa Italia derby against Inter. Thrown in at the deep end, just four days after moving to Milan on loan from Chelsea and not speaking or understanding any Italian at that stage, Tomori was sent on as an early substitute to replace the injured Simon Kjaer in the centre of defence. “Alexis Sanchez got the ball and the manager had said to get close to their attackers, so when he got the ball I decided to go straight in,” said Tomori. “I fouled him and Zlatan was like (claps his hands), ‘That is it, that is what you should do, be aggressive, it’s good’. So, obviously, that was a bit of an early boost for me.”

Tomori had just finished the latest of his Italian classes when we spoke for an hour over a video call from the apartment he is staying in 20 minutes from the centre of Milan.

The 23 year-old’s excitement and enthusiasm for his latest opportunity radiated through the screen, while he was candidly honest about the last 12 months at Chelsea in which he was left confused and frustrated by the decisions of his former head coach Frank Lampard.

Other than beginning to master the Italian language, Tomori has quickly adapted to life in Serie A, winning rave reviews for his performances - even if working alongside some of the game’s legends does not yet feel entirely normal.

“There’s definitely a vibe to Zlatan,” said Tomori. “He’s a leader and he’s got a presence, but he’s different from his public image. He’s 39 and won all these trophies and scored all these goals, and he’s saying, ‘We’re going to defend together. When I go, you come with me. When we score, we celebrate together’. 

“Every day before training he’s in the gym, he’s doing core. One time, one of the conditioners was like, ‘Yeah, just join in with Zlatan doing a core session’, and it was a tough one! At his age, he’s not just driving himself but dragging everyone else with him and setting standards. And that self-confidence in himself helps to bring out the self-confidence in the team.”

Tomori still stops to look at the pictures of the legendary AC Milan teams and players that are on the walls of the club’s training ground, and it was one of the biggest legends of all who first approached him about leaving Chelsea in January.

“My agent told me Milan wanted to speak to me and he asked me if I knew who the technical director is,” said Tomori. “He said it was Paolo Maldini and I was like, ‘Oh’. 

“Obviously I wasn’t going to say no, so I said yeah let’s talk for sure. And then we had a scheduled Zoom call and he was just there on the screen in front of me. It was like, ‘Whoa’. He spoke English to me perfectly and it was surreal, it was strange. I got off the call and I was thinking, ‘Wow, I’ve just spoken to Paolo Maldini’. The only thing I needed to think about was moving to another country, but, other than that, I was sold on it.

“Maldini’s at the training ground every day. After games as well and he will always say, ‘Congratulations, well done’. Even if it’s just a passing comment or a ‘well done’, the fact I’m a defender and it’s come from him, it fills you with pride. It’s like Lionel Messi saying well done to a young attacker. It’s special.”

Italian coronavirus regulations are not currently as strict as they are in the UK, so Tomori has been able to get a feel for Milan and, having made his debut in one derby, he already knows the importance of the clubs' Serie A tussle on Sunday. Inter overtook Milan at the top of the table by one point last week as the city rivals - neither of whom have won the title in a decade - battle for pre-eminence.

“All over the city, there are places where you go where the writing is in black and red or in other places it’s in blue and black,” said Tomori. “It’s not London where there are five, six, seven teams, this is just AC and Inter, two massive clubs, so whoever wins has the rule of the city. They just call it ‘the derby’. It’s not the Milan derby or the game between AC and Inter, it’s ‘the derby’. It’s the game.”

Italian clubs have not traditionally looked at England for their central defenders, with Des Walker, Paul Elliott and, lately, Chris Smalling among just a handful to have been deemed good enough to play in Serie A.

“I know that Italy is notorious for creating and producing the world’s best defenders,” said Tomori. “Serie A has the world’s best defenders, I know that. They pride themselves on positioning and the philosophy of defending, being able to think about where you are at a specific point or why you’re standing here or where you need to pass the ball. Where you need to be in relation to a different person, which is different to the Premier League.

“The Premier League is a lot of instinct, high speed and a lot of physical work. I’ve grown up on that and it suits me, but being here and learning how the manager wants me to play, I’m thinking about my game a lot more. That definitely was an attraction and I’m really trying to relish the experience and develop myself as much as possible, however long I’m here.”

It remains a puzzle to many Chelsea fans that a player deemed good enough to play a key part for a club involved in the Serie A title race had only made two Premier League appearances since the start of 2020 up to his departure.

The first half of last season could barely have gone better for Tomori at Chelsea as he was a regular in Lampard’s team, won his first England cap and signed a five-year contract. But he is at a loss to explain why he then lost his place and could not earn an opportunity to win it back.

“I was suddenly out of the squad and I don’t really know why,” said Tomori. “I just thought I needed to work hard. Then I went to speak to the manager and he said you’ve just got to train harder, so I took that on the chin and thought that’s what I had to do. 

“Mentally, it was difficult because you just want to be playing and on the pitch, and feel part of the team. And it was difficult for me because I wasn’t really feeling part of the team and I was wondering what had happened. I was trying to do extra and push myself more but, at that time, nothing seemed to work and nothing was explained to me.

“It was so frustrating. 2020, football-wise, was very, very difficult, especially after the way 2019 had gone for me playing games. From being at 100 to literally going down to zero and then not knowing the reason why it had gone to zero, it was very challenging.”

Milan had been one of the clubs to show an interest in Tomori last summer, along with Everton and West Ham United, during the final hours of the transfer window.

“I was thinking that after the way the previous six months had gone, the best thing for me to do was to go on loan and get some games and come back to Chelsea with a full season in the Premier League behind me,” said Tomori. “I was ready to go and I wasn’t allowed to because the manager said I was in his plans.

“Then, a few hours before the deadline, I got a call saying the manager had said I could go to West Ham and it was a shock because this hadn’t been in the conversation at all.

“I like to think I’m pretty logical and I think things through and, together with my dad and my agent, my plan had been that if Everton didn’t happen, I had to be prepared to stay at Chelsea. By the time the West Ham offer came, it was too late to just switch that mentality with no time to think about it.”

Tomori quickly found himself back at square one at Chelsea, as, having started the season ahead of Antonio Rudiger as fourth-choice centre-back, he was relegated below the German and out of the matchday squad after the summer transfer window closed.

He insists he holds no bad feelings towards Lampard, but admits his demotion was particularly tough to take because of the relationship the pair had previously shared. Tomori was Derby County player of the year under Lampard and was handed his Premier League and Champions League debuts by his ex-coach at Chelsea.

“I will always be grateful for the opportunities he gave me,” said Tomori. “Maybe because of our history he thought I would accept it, but from my perspective, with that history, it felt more personal and harder to understand.

“I don’t know what happened, it wasn’t really explained to me. Soon after joining Milan, the manager sent me a positive message. It was an unusual situation - I wasn’t at Chelsea any more and he wasn’t the manager. With all he had going on, it was a nice thing to take the time to do. I appreciated that. I wouldn’t say there is a bad feeling, it just is what it is. I’ve learned to look forward and I’m stronger for the experience.

“That was a challenging time mentally, but carrying it with me isn’t going to be good for me. I made a promise to myself that now I’m in Milan, the next months or until whenever, I’ve got to be focused on what I’m doing here. Everybody would love to live a fairytale, but football and life is not a fairytale. I’m not saying I’m never going to be at Chelsea again. But at this time I’m not a Chelsea player, I’m at Milan and I have to be focused on here and, who knows, I could have a fairytale in Milan.”

While Milan is very much his priority right now, Tomori wants to add to his one senior England cap, won against Kosovo in November 2019, and has received encouragement that he remains on manager Gareth Southgate’s radar.

Asked if anybody from the England set-up had been in touch, Tomori said: “Yeah, I’ve had a few messages from people congratulating me on the move and saying good luck. Hopefully I can do well enough, so that I can see them all at St George’s Park, but at this point in time I’ve just got to focus on putting up the performances to be in that conversation.

“Playing at a high level is what I need to be doing to be in that conversation for England or to say, ‘I think I can make the Euros squad’. The next international break, if I don’t get picked I’m not going to stop. I’ll just carry on doing what I can and whatever happens in the summer happens. A reason why I’m here and a reason I wanted to go and play games is so I can be in the England manager’s thoughts. I still want to play for England.”

 
Coxy15 said:
Given the very recent abuse towards black player on Social Media, I cant say that its a much more pleasant experience in England. We often think Italy/Spain have a bigger problem than England but there's more than enough racists here to make society and life sh*t for BAME players.
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Well yes, although a lot of that abuse to black players has come from overseas accounts. 

The issue with the PL is it is so global that on social media you will be abused from all countries. Not just English people. 

Sounds like Tomori wasn't given a fair deal by Lampard. I always felt he was somewhat overrated by many on here, but I couldn't see why he was playing so much less than Rudiger or Christensen. 

 
bisright1 said:
Well yes, although a lot of that abuse to black players has come from overseas accounts. 

The issue with the PL is it is so global that on social media you will be abused from all countries. Not just English people. 

Sounds like Tomori wasn't given a fair deal by Lampard. I always felt he was somewhat overrated by many on here, but I couldn't see why he was playing so much less than Rudiger or Christensen. 
Click to expand...
I am sorry mate but one of the main reasons I use this forum as opposed to social media to discuss football is due to the sheer amount of racist abuse I've got on those platforms, majority of it by fans in the UK.

I've suffered racist abuse mainly at away grounds on a regular basis and is one of the main reason I would never consider taking my daughter to a football match to any stadium other then Stamford Bridge. Racism in football is very much widespread and you cannot point fingers to leagues and Countries and say its worse their whilst completely ignoring incidents at the doorstep.

 
Imran_CFC said:
I am sorry mate but one of the main reasons I use this forum as opposed to social media to discuss football is due to the sheer amount of racist abuse I've got on those platforms, majority of it by fans in the UK.

I've suffered racist abuse mainly at away grounds on a regular basis and is one of the main reason I would never consider taking my daughter to a football match to any stadium other then Stamford Bridge. Racism in football is very much widespread and you cannot point fingers to leagues and Countries and say its worse their whilst completely ignoring incidents at the doorstep.
Click to expand...
Sorry I don't disagree with you. It is a problem for the reasons you outline in this country. I don't care if it's a bigger problem in italy or not. I don't live there. 

I was mainly highlighting that racist abuse on social media is a global problem. Not just an English one. 

 
Coxy15 said:
Given the very recent abuse towards black player on Social Media, I cant say that its a much more pleasant experience in England. We often think Italy/Spain have a bigger problem than England but there's more than enough racists here to make society and life sh*t for BAME players.
Click to expand...
The social media abuse could be sent from persons anywhere in the world. That's an Internet problem rather than a regional or football problem. 

Italy has a much bigger problem with racism in their grounds than England. Entire sections of grounds in Italy have subjected players to horrid racial abuse in recent years. 

That's not to say England doesn't have work to do but we're lightyears ahead of Italy in that regard. 

 
We have a rich recent history in 'the ones that got away', some of whom were the right decision at the time (e.g. Salah), some of whom were regrettable (e.g. Lukaku), and some of whom were downright tragic (de Bruyne).

Tomori is a serious talent. He certainly has the potential to be (and arguably already is) better than all but one of the defenders we currently have, and paid a lot of money for.

I really hope he isn't added to that list.

 
The Tomori interview is interesting and I'm glad he's doing well at Milan, but this "the manager just dropped me for no reason" narrative smells a bit fishy to me. I'd like to hear Lampard's side of the story but doubt he'd ever speak about it publicly. I seem to remember Lampard getting frustrated with him for losing focus on the pitch shortly before he was dropped, and there was that time last year he was in the papers for going out and violating corona-restrictions (I think they were celebrating CHO's birthday, or something like that).  And in the interview he even admits that Lampard told him he needs to "train harder". I definitely get the feeling that, at least in Lampard's eyes, Tomori was possibly not showing the professional dedication that somebody like Lampard would expect from a Chelsea player.

 
It must have been an attitude thing. Or Tomori called Lampard out in training or something. There’s no other explanation... because our other centre halves were making mistakes left right and centre. I hope it’s not that though and he comes back and plays for us regularly.

 
With the pace he has i still think he would've been our best partner next to Silva and would have learned so much from him in a positional sense.

 
According to Sky Sports Maldini has already contacted Chelsea to see if they can make the move permanent with the 26m option. The way he has started there he may not be returning.

 
Imran_CFC said:
I am sorry mate but one of the main reasons I use this forum as opposed to social media to discuss football is due to the sheer amount of racist abuse I've got on those platforms, majority of it by fans in the UK.

I've suffered racist abuse mainly at away grounds on a regular basis and is one of the main reason I would never consider taking my daughter to a football match to any stadium other then Stamford Bridge. Racism in football is very much widespread and you cannot point fingers to leagues and Countries and say its worse their whilst completely ignoring incidents at the doorstep.
Click to expand...
It is really sad. I enjoy reading your posts and I’m sure I’m not the only one, people must be so thick to being unable to look past your skin colour. It really is pathetic.

 
RIP Mourinho said:
Buy clause was always going to be too cheap. Could you imagine Liverpool selling Gomez for £26m?
Click to expand...

Milan already making noises that the buy option fee is too high for them. 

Milan posted loses of £170m last year, it's unlikely they can afford transfer fees above £20m right now. 

This summer all their purchases were for under £5m and it's likely their going to be needing to find a centre forward come the end of the season with Ibrahimovic's contract expiring (and he turns 40 this year too). 

 
blueboy26 said:
It did not take long for Zlatan Ibrahimovic to decide he liked what he saw during Fikayo Tomori’s AC Milan debut in last month’s Coppa Italia derby against Inter. Thrown in at the deep end, just four days after moving to Milan on loan from Chelsea and not speaking or understanding any Italian at that stage, Tomori was sent on as an early substitute to replace the injured Simon Kjaer in the centre of defence. “Alexis Sanchez got the ball and the manager had said to get close to their attackers, so when he got the ball I decided to go straight in,” said Tomori. “I fouled him and Zlatan was like (claps his hands), ‘That is it, that is what you should do, be aggressive, it’s good’. So, obviously, that was a bit of an early boost for me.”

Tomori had just finished the latest of his Italian classes when we spoke for an hour over a video call from the apartment he is staying in 20 minutes from the centre of Milan.

The 23 year-old’s excitement and enthusiasm for his latest opportunity radiated through the screen, while he was candidly honest about the last 12 months at Chelsea in which he was left confused and frustrated by the decisions of his former head coach Frank Lampard.

Other than beginning to master the Italian language, Tomori has quickly adapted to life in Serie A, winning rave reviews for his performances - even if working alongside some of the game’s legends does not yet feel entirely normal.

“There’s definitely a vibe to Zlatan,” said Tomori. “He’s a leader and he’s got a presence, but he’s different from his public image. He’s 39 and won all these trophies and scored all these goals, and he’s saying, ‘We’re going to defend together. When I go, you come with me. When we score, we celebrate together’. 

“Every day before training he’s in the gym, he’s doing core. One time, one of the conditioners was like, ‘Yeah, just join in with Zlatan doing a core session’, and it was a tough one! At his age, he’s not just driving himself but dragging everyone else with him and setting standards. And that self-confidence in himself helps to bring out the self-confidence in the team.”

Tomori still stops to look at the pictures of the legendary AC Milan teams and players that are on the walls of the club’s training ground, and it was one of the biggest legends of all who first approached him about leaving Chelsea in January.

“My agent told me Milan wanted to speak to me and he asked me if I knew who the technical director is,” said Tomori. “He said it was Paolo Maldini and I was like, ‘Oh’. 

“Obviously I wasn’t going to say no, so I said yeah let’s talk for sure. And then we had a scheduled Zoom call and he was just there on the screen in front of me. It was like, ‘Whoa’. He spoke English to me perfectly and it was surreal, it was strange. I got off the call and I was thinking, ‘Wow, I’ve just spoken to Paolo Maldini’. The only thing I needed to think about was moving to another country, but, other than that, I was sold on it.

“Maldini’s at the training ground every day. After games as well and he will always say, ‘Congratulations, well done’. Even if it’s just a passing comment or a ‘well done’, the fact I’m a defender and it’s come from him, it fills you with pride. It’s like Lionel Messi saying well done to a young attacker. It’s special.”

Italian coronavirus regulations are not currently as strict as they are in the UK, so Tomori has been able to get a feel for Milan and, having made his debut in one derby, he already knows the importance of the clubs' Serie A tussle on Sunday. Inter overtook Milan at the top of the table by one point last week as the city rivals - neither of whom have won the title in a decade - battle for pre-eminence.

“All over the city, there are places where you go where the writing is in black and red or in other places it’s in blue and black,” said Tomori. “It’s not London where there are five, six, seven teams, this is just AC and Inter, two massive clubs, so whoever wins has the rule of the city. They just call it ‘the derby’. It’s not the Milan derby or the game between AC and Inter, it’s ‘the derby’. It’s the game.”

Italian clubs have not traditionally looked at England for their central defenders, with Des Walker, Paul Elliott and, lately, Chris Smalling among just a handful to have been deemed good enough to play in Serie A.

“I know that Italy is notorious for creating and producing the world’s best defenders,” said Tomori. “Serie A has the world’s best defenders, I know that. They pride themselves on positioning and the philosophy of defending, being able to think about where you are at a specific point or why you’re standing here or where you need to pass the ball. Where you need to be in relation to a different person, which is different to the Premier League.

“The Premier League is a lot of instinct, high speed and a lot of physical work. I’ve grown up on that and it suits me, but being here and learning how the manager wants me to play, I’m thinking about my game a lot more. That definitely was an attraction and I’m really trying to relish the experience and develop myself as much as possible, however long I’m here.”

It remains a puzzle to many Chelsea fans that a player deemed good enough to play a key part for a club involved in the Serie A title race had only made two Premier League appearances since the start of 2020 up to his departure.

The first half of last season could barely have gone better for Tomori at Chelsea as he was a regular in Lampard’s team, won his first England cap and signed a five-year contract. But he is at a loss to explain why he then lost his place and could not earn an opportunity to win it back.

“I was suddenly out of the squad and I don’t really know why,” said Tomori. “I just thought I needed to work hard. Then I went to speak to the manager and he said you’ve just got to train harder, so I took that on the chin and thought that’s what I had to do. 

“Mentally, it was difficult because you just want to be playing and on the pitch, and feel part of the team. And it was difficult for me because I wasn’t really feeling part of the team and I was wondering what had happened. I was trying to do extra and push myself more but, at that time, nothing seemed to work and nothing was explained to me.

“It was so frustrating. 2020, football-wise, was very, very difficult, especially after the way 2019 had gone for me playing games. From being at 100 to literally going down to zero and then not knowing the reason why it had gone to zero, it was very challenging.”

Milan had been one of the clubs to show an interest in Tomori last summer, along with Everton and West Ham United, during the final hours of the transfer window.

“I was thinking that after the way the previous six months had gone, the best thing for me to do was to go on loan and get some games and come back to Chelsea with a full season in the Premier League behind me,” said Tomori. “I was ready to go and I wasn’t allowed to because the manager said I was in his plans.

“Then, a few hours before the deadline, I got a call saying the manager had said I could go to West Ham and it was a shock because this hadn’t been in the conversation at all.

“I like to think I’m pretty logical and I think things through and, together with my dad and my agent, my plan had been that if Everton didn’t happen, I had to be prepared to stay at Chelsea. By the time the West Ham offer came, it was too late to just switch that mentality with no time to think about it.”

Tomori quickly found himself back at square one at Chelsea, as, having started the season ahead of Antonio Rudiger as fourth-choice centre-back, he was relegated below the German and out of the matchday squad after the summer transfer window closed.

He insists he holds no bad feelings towards Lampard, but admits his demotion was particularly tough to take because of the relationship the pair had previously shared. Tomori was Derby County player of the year under Lampard and was handed his Premier League and Champions League debuts by his ex-coach at Chelsea.

“I will always be grateful for the opportunities he gave me,” said Tomori. “Maybe because of our history he thought I would accept it, but from my perspective, with that history, it felt more personal and harder to understand.

“I don’t know what happened, it wasn’t really explained to me. Soon after joining Milan, the manager sent me a positive message. It was an unusual situation - I wasn’t at Chelsea any more and he wasn’t the manager. With all he had going on, it was a nice thing to take the time to do. I appreciated that. I wouldn’t say there is a bad feeling, it just is what it is. I’ve learned to look forward and I’m stronger for the experience.

“That was a challenging time mentally, but carrying it with me isn’t going to be good for me. I made a promise to myself that now I’m in Milan, the next months or until whenever, I’ve got to be focused on what I’m doing here. Everybody would love to live a fairytale, but football and life is not a fairytale. I’m not saying I’m never going to be at Chelsea again. But at this time I’m not a Chelsea player, I’m at Milan and I have to be focused on here and, who knows, I could have a fairytale in Milan.”

While Milan is very much his priority right now, Tomori wants to add to his one senior England cap, won against Kosovo in November 2019, and has received encouragement that he remains on manager Gareth Southgate’s radar.

Asked if anybody from the England set-up had been in touch, Tomori said: “Yeah, I’ve had a few messages from people congratulating me on the move and saying good luck. Hopefully I can do well enough, so that I can see them all at St George’s Park, but at this point in time I’ve just got to focus on putting up the performances to be in that conversation.

“Playing at a high level is what I need to be doing to be in that conversation for England or to say, ‘I think I can make the Euros squad’. The next international break, if I don’t get picked I’m not going to stop. I’ll just carry on doing what I can and whatever happens in the summer happens. A reason why I’m here and a reason I wanted to go and play games is so I can be in the England manager’s thoughts. I still want to play for England.”
Click to expand...
Wow, very interesting.

You can empathize with Tomori getting the Zoom call from Maldini.

The comments on Ibrahimovic are very interesting too, never really taken to the chap yet seeing he is so old and still at top makes me want to revisit that as does Tomori's insights about him.

 
ForeverCarefree said:
Milan already making noises that the buy option fee is too high for them. 

Milan posted loses of £170m last year, it's unlikely they can afford transfer fees above £20m right now. 

This summer all their purchases were for under £5m and it's likely their going to be needing to find a centre forward come the end of the season with Ibrahimovic's contract expiring (and he turns 40 this year too). 
Click to expand...
Let’s hope they can’t afford him. I won’t be happy if we sell him for 26m, in the current state of transfer market a young exciting English CB should be worth more than that.

Maguire went for 80m for Christ’s sake.

 
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