Mihajlovic: "We need another central defender."
Mihajlovic: "I spoke with Mexes on the phone. He definitely has to change his attitude."
Philippe Mexes has proved to be a poor successor to Milan's long line of excellent center-backs. When compared to Franco Baresi, Billy Costacurta, Alessandro Nesta,Paolo Maldini and Thiago Silva the Frenchman seems grossly inadequate.
Mexes has been a Milan player since 2011. Since his arrival, he's played in 81 Serie A games and, according to WhoScored.com, received 30 yellow cards. That's a whopping 37 percent of his games. This past season, he started 18 games and got booked in half of them.
Those two were standout incidents of indiscipline, but all those bookings have taken their toll. According to Transfermarkt, Mexes has lost 17 matches to suspension since moving to Milan from Roma.
What's most infuriating about Mexes is that when he keeps his head and is on form, he's actually not a bad player.
The maddening fact of the matter is it's almost impossible to predict which version of Mexes is going to appear in a given match. Good Mexes can be a decent contributor; bad Mexes is a red card or mistake waiting to happen.Unfortunately, bad Mexes seems to be the one we see most often.
Philippe Mexes has been making Milan fans bang their heads against walls for four years. No other player in the Rossoneri's employ has done more to cause hair loss among his supporters.
Contract was unexpectedly renewed. Silvio Berlusconi was behind the renewal, going over the head of new coach Sinisa Mihajlovic to do so.
Since Bee Taechaubol's consortium invested in the team in May, Milan has gone after an array of attackers but few defenders. For some Milan fans, the fact Mexes was re-signed rather than a new and better player is further evidence the team's biggest weakness—the defence—is still being ignored by the team's decision-makers.