AC Milan duo Franck Kessie and Lucas Biglia were left to apologize after an altercation on the touchline during Sunday’s 3-2 loss to Inter in the Milan derby at the San Siro.
In the 69th minute, with Inter up 3-1, Kessie was substituted off by AC Milan manager Gennaro Gattuso, and was visibly frustrated with the decision of his withdrawal. Biglia, while sitting in his seat on the bench, appeared to say something to him as he came off the pitch, which triggered the incident. Multiple teammates and staff are forced to hold Kessie back, while fellow unused substitute Diego Laxalt appears to try talking Biglia down from the seat next to him.
“It was the adrenaline of the match situation, I was frustrated coming off and really wanted to do more. I took it out on Lucas and it was a mistake, I apologized afterwards,” Kessie told Sky Sport Italia after the match. “He is older than me and I should learn from him. I’m sorry.”
While Biglia’s statement seemed like less of an admission of guilt, he still said he was embarrassed by the incident and admitted he could have handled it differently.
“Franck knows what I said and we clarified the situation afterwards,” the Argentine said. “We all want to win, but this is not something we should do in front of everyone. Maybe save it for the dressing room. We above all feel bad for this embarrassing scene, I feel ashamed of it and apologized to the team and coach in person. It was not what we wanted, we embarrassed the club we represent and it won’t happen again.”
One eagle-eyed Twitter user noticed that the problems between the two could run deeper than just this one moment. Lucas Biglia opened the scoring against Chievo Verona last time out in an eventual 2-1 win, and zoomed-out video showed the entire team celebrating with the Argentine goalscorer except Kessie, who glances at the rest of the celebrating squad for around five seconds before casually turning his back and strolling towards the center of the pitch for the restart.
The loss for Milan on Sunday dropped them into fourth, the final Champions League place in the Serie A table, with a six-point lead over fifth-placed Roma.