From problems, opportunities can arise. It is a mantra Luciano Spalletti has repeated on many occasions — and while he would have gladly avoided the particular problem posed by Manuel Locatelli’s knee surgery, the midfield emergency it has created has opened a door for one of the most interesting young players in the club’s development pipeline. Augusto Sedorf Owusu — born in 2005, named by his father in honour of a great former AC Milan midfielder, the “Sedorf” being an anagrafe error that has never been corrected — is now closer than ever to collecting his first minutes in Serie A.
The Player Who Was Supposed to Leave — and Stayed
The original summer plan for Owusu was a loan. A queue of Serie B clubs was ready to take him, each offering a year of development in the second division — precisely the kind of environment that has already proven so productive for Licina and Adžić. He stayed instead. He was included in the Asian tour. He worked alongside the first team. He convinced Spalletti. And now, still aggregated with the senior group during a week of extraordinary midfield depletion, the opportunity for which he has spent his entire career preparing has arrived ahead of schedule.
The financial dimension, as Tuttosport’s Marco Amato notes, is not irrelevant in the current climate. In a squad where attention to the balance sheet is at a maximum, integrating a player who grew up at the club — from Vinovo to the Continassa, with only a brief Primavera loan to Reggiana — rather than purchasing one represents both good housekeeping and good faith in the academy system.
Is He Ready for Serie A?
The honest answer, as Amato acknowledges, is that it is too early to say definitively. What is clear is that Owusu has developed significantly in both personality and self-belief in recent years — the technical qualities were always visible, but the psychological foundation required to operate at the highest level takes time and cannot be manufactured. His challenge, if and when Spalletti throws him into the mix, will be to demonstrate in Serie A the same composure he shows in Serie C when managing the ball under pressure in congested spaces.
As a player, Owusu is a box-to-box central midfielder — one who moves from area to area, frequently accompanies the attacking phase, offers passing options in the build-up, manages possession intelligently, can dribble, and switches the play. He is more of a mezzala than a pure holding midfielder — more of a player who provides a creative spark than one who provides defensive balance. That profile makes him a genuine option for Spalletti in the current circumstances — particularly given that the most urgent need is precisely to inject energy and forward movement into a midfield department that, in the absence of Locatelli and Thuram, risks becoming statically conservative. The Next Gen’s manager Massimo Brambilla will lose one of his most important players. He will, as the article notes with affection, find a way to live with it. That, after all, is precisely what the second team exists for.
