Imagine where Championship table-toppers Leeds United would be right now if they’d signed Atalanta’s Serie A superstar Josip Ilicic.
The Darko Milanic era has gone down as a strange, forgotten era in the storied history of Leeds United Football Club.
A man who arrived at Elland Road with a sparkling reputation in Slovenia, winning seven trophies during a silver-coated era at Maribor, Milanic was gone just 32 days into his two-year contract in West Yorkshire.
All it took was six games, six winless games we must add, for Dave Hockaday’s ill-fated replacement to become the latest victim of the ravenous ‘Manager Eater’ that was Massimo Cellino.
But it’s tempting to wonder how differently things might have turned out if Milanic had been given the chance to get his feet under the table. And with Tuttomercatoweb reporting that the former Sturm Graz coach had identified a certain Josip Ilicic as one of his first transfer targets, he clearly had a nose for a diamond in the rough.
At the time, Ilicic was an exciting if erratic attacking midfielder who was struggling to live up to expectations at Fiorentina. Six years on, however, this late-blooming 32-year-old is the talk of Europe.
A four-goal haul in a Champions League last-16 will do that to your reputation, of course. On Tuesday night, Ilicic joined Lionel Messi, Robert Lewandowski and Mario Gomez in a very exclusive club, netting four times in a single knockout-tie.
He is also the oldest player to achieve the feat in the competition’s history, replacing Zlatan Ibrahimovic. Though Valencia, who suffered a 4-3 defeat against an Ilicic-inspired Atalanta, should perhaps have seen this coming.
After all, Ilicic has 14 goals in 2020 alone, establishing himself as one of the hottest forwards in world football right now.
Maybe Milanic was on to something, all those years ago.
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