Milan’s Stefano Pioli: ‘Having fun is fundamental … football is passion’

Stefano Pioli led Milan back to the promised land, guiding a team that used to define themselves by continental conquests to a first Champions League qualification in eight years, but even that could not save him from parental criticism. If the Rossoneri end this season without a trophy, his mother will be waiting to remind him, again, that he has won no major silverware in two decades of senior club management.

“Definitely. Yes, definitely,” he says, leaning in with an unapologetic grin. “And it’s right that she does. In every family there is the hard one and the soft one. My father was the softer one, my mum is the very tough one. That’s how it should be. That’s how you get the most out of someone.”

A discussion of parenting styles feels like a necessary step toward understanding Pioli’s rise. So many players have described him as like a father – from the Milan midfielder Sandro Tonali to the Fiorentina striker Dusan Vlahovic – that you start to think he should write books on how to raise your young ones.

“I do try to look beyond the surface,” he says. “To move past the value of a player and get through to the person. Even if these are young lads who we would call fortunate, they are still young lads with their own lives, their own emotional triggers, personal ties, difficulties.”

He is not one to mollycoddle. If anything, Pioli believes he is more like his mum, “severe, up to the point where I no longer see a capacity to keep improving constantly”. “I don’t tolerate mediocrity,” he says. “And I don’t tolerate us failing to strain to get better.

“If I see players who are demanding of themselves, who are getting better through their own attitude, their own work, then I become more of a, I wouldn’t say a friend, but I