Zlatan Ibrahimovic will have as a partner in Milan someone with whom he starred in a fight

Mike Maignan will play for Milan next season. The 25-year-old Lille goalkeeper, recently crowned French Ligue 1 champion, will replace Gianluigi Donnarumma, who ends his contract and will leave the Milan team at the end of June.

The Frenchman, who will be at the European Championship this summer with France, arrived at Lille in the 2015-16 season from Paris Saint-Germain, where he coincided with Alphonse Areola, now a teammate, and also with a Zlatan Ibrahimovic with whom he had a curious anecdote in a workout.

"I remember a session when I was 17 years old, my first year as a professional. Ibra was throwing at 400 per hour and no, I didn't stop one. He even told me 'you're a shitty goalkeeper', and when I stopped him I answered the question. Saying himself 'you're a shitty striker'", explains the goalkeeper, who remembers that from then on they got on well, beginning his admiration for the Swede.

"At the moment he ignored me, but then in the dressing room he told me that he appreciated me and I realized that I liked him not only as a player, but also as a person," says Maignan, who also had it with the current Juventus player, Adrien Rabiot, in another PSG training session: "It was the second time we met, because of a joke that he took as disrespect. He is a calm guy, but he has a very strong character. We get along well."

For the readers of France Football, Mike Maignan has been the best goalkeeper of the 2020-21 season (something he already achieved in 2019), and even he himself has repeatedly repeated that his self-esteem is through the roof: "I have nothing less than Oblak or Neuer".

A player who as a child didn't want to be a goalkeeper and did want to be a forward. In fact, many of the teammates who coincided with him in the lower categories continue to call him a 'gunman'. During his youth he grew up in a slum on the outskirts of Paris and, like many others, had a difficult childhood, which makes him continue to value his current life: "Winning four Champions League has no value, the real trophy is to make you happy to my family and to make my mother proud".