Paulo Fonseca, a Portuguese coach, was fired by AC Milan in Italy after barely six months

After just six months in charge, Serie A team AC Milan fired coach Paulo Fonseca on Monday after the team’s patchy performance dropped them to eighth place in Italy’s top football league.

Milan has only won two of their last seven league games, including Sunday’s 1-1 draw at home against struggling AS Roma.

With one game remaining, the 19-time Italian champions are 14 points behind leaders Atalanta and eight points outside the top four.

“AC Milan announces that Paulo Fonseca has been relieved of his duties as head coach of the men’s first team,” the club announced in a statement.

Former Porto manager Sergio Conceicao was expected to take over, according to local media reports.

Italian Stefano Pioli, who had led Milan to a solitary league championship in 2022 during his five-year tenure and finished second and 19 points behind champions Inter Milan in his final season, was replaced by Fonseca in June.

So, when former Roma coach Fonseca arrived following two seasons at Lille in French Ligue 1, expectations were going to be high right away.

However, Milan had a difficult start under the 51-year-old Portuguese, losing 2-1 to promoted Parma and drawing 2-2 with Torino and Lazio.

Before defeating rivals Inter 2-1, Fonseca guided Milan to their first victory of the season in mid-September, a 4-0 success against Venezia at home.

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Following a similarly dismal start to their Champions League campaign, in which they lost to Bayer Leverkusen and Liverpool in back-to-back games, they went on a four-game winning streak, defeating champions Real Madrid in the process.

But in its 17 league games so far this season, Milan has only triumphed seven times.

Prior to this, Fonseca won three straight Ukrainian Premier League championships with Shakhtar Donetsk from 2017 to 2019, the Portuguese Super Cup with Porto in 2013, and the Portuguese Cup with Braga in 2015–16.