Zac Lee Rigg: Milan is still a one-man team, except now it relies on a 20-year-old

Half a year ago Zlatan Ibrahimovic was the most important player on Milan and the only comments anyone made about Stephan El Shaarawy pertained to his hair.

Rino Gattuso grumbled about El Shaarawy plucking his eyebrows. Several other teammates threatened to lop off his mohawk, dubbed la cresta in Italy.

I hope that he scores at least 15 goals," captain Massimo Ambrosini said this summer. "If he doesn't, I will cut off la cresta. If he scores seven before Christmas, I will pay for his holidays."

El Shaarawy accomplished that by October. Ambrosini upped the ante from a vacation in the mountains to a trip to the Caribbean should the Little Pharaoh (his father is Egyptian) hit 10.

El Shaarawy leads Serie A with 14 league goals, one ahead of Edinson Cavani; Miroslav Klose and Antonio Di Natale sit on 10. Ambrosini, wisely, didn't raise the stakes.

Now, as El Shaarawy flies for his all-inclusive holiday (reports suggest he ended up going to Dubai), he's become as integral to Milan as Ibrahimovic was.

Last year, Milan scored 80 goals in Serie A and the UEFA Champions League. Ibrahimovic was responsible for 43 of them (28 goals and six assists in the league, and five goals and four assists in Europe). This season, El Shaarawy has scored or assisted 17, half of Milan's 34 league goals.

"El Shaarawy is playing better than we expected him to," Adriano Galliani said. "He just turned 20 last week and I don’t know how many forwards of his age are scoring goals so consistently. The only other player like him in the world is Neymar."

Like Neymar, El Shaarawy thrives on jutting in from the left flank onto his favored right foot. But he's decent on the other side of the ball as well. Arsene Wenger, Cesare Prandelli and Paolo Maldini have all praised his defensive work. Gattuso held up his hands and admitted he was wrong to dismiss his former teammate. Andriy Shevchenko sees himself in the way El Shaarawy accelerates.

The forward has risen quickly. A few weeks after his 16th birthday he became the youngest player to feature for Italy's oldest club when he made his debut for Genoa. He went on loan to Padova the next year and came within a playoff of leading the team into Serie A. He won the player of the year award for Italy's second division and Milan bought half of his rights.

"When he arrived here from Padova he had a lot of fitness problems, but he's better now and he's one of the biggest talents in world soccer," Galliani said. "He kicks the ball with tremendous precision and manages to place it wherever he wants with an incredible eye for goal."

That finishing prowess only emerged twice his first year in Milan, when he made 22 appearances but only six of them as a starter. He also struggled to gel with Ibrahimovic. "The secret is to pass him the ball, or he starts to growl," El Shaaraway said. But with Ibra's departure popping the clutch on his career, El Shaarawy is now a full Italian international, making his debut against England and scoring his first goal against France. He is a legitimate star.

"I thought it would be easy not to get carried away," he said. "Actually, it's tough. When you see a footballer, you say to yourself: 'How do they get to be so presumptuous?' But when it's you, and people never stop asking for autographs or photos, and they're always on your back, you start to think of yourself as some sort of phenomenon. Luckily, my father is there to make sure I keep my feet on the ground. I still act the same way around everyone, including my old friends from Savona. The only difference now is that it's me who's buying the pizza."

Really, the only thing that's changed is the name of Milan's offensive protagonist. Even la cresta has received a presidential pardon, of sorts.

Messi, Xavi and Puyol commit to Barca

Barcelona trio Carles Puyol, Xavi Hernandez and Leo Messi are all to sign new deals at the club, securing that three of the club's "reference players" will remain at the Camp Nou far into the future.
Puyol, 34, is to extend his deal for a further three years until June 2016; Xavi, 32, will extend his contract another two seasons up to 2016, while Messi, 25, will add two extra years to his deal, keeping him at the Camp Nou until June 2018.
Barca announced the news via their club website on Tuesday morning.
"FC Barcelona can announce that it has reached agreements with Carles Puyol, Xavi Hernandez and Leo Messi for the renewal of their respective contracts," the official statement read. "This news means that FC Barcelona has secured its ties with three of its most important players. Over the course of the next few weeks, Carles Puyol, Xavi Hernandez and Leo Messi will all be signing their respective new contracts."
The news came after club captain Puyol told reporters on Monday that ideally he would like to play until he was 40, as long as he could keep contributing to the cause.
"I want to continue playing, but I do not want to be a passenger," he said. "The moment I do not feel okay, I will stop, regardless of my contract."
Puyol said that his contract negotiations had been put on hold recently while he concentrated on getting back in shape to help the team after a suffering a string of injuries in recent months.
"I was concentrating on getting back to fitness," he said. "It was a difficult time, but you have to learn from these experiences and they make you stronger. I feel fine now. The moment I stop enjoying it, I will stop playing".
Puyol played all 90 minutes in Sunday evening's 4-1 win over Atletico Madrid, which stretched Barca's lead in the table to nine points over Atletico and 13 over Real Madrid. 'Tarzan' said he still considered Jose Mourinho's Madrid a dangerous challenger for the title.
"If there is one team who never give up, it is Real Madrid," he said. "They have shown that in other seasons. We cannot become complacent, we still have to go to the Bernabeu. If you were told about 13 points at the start of the season, you would not believe it. But our numbers are very good and have been won on the field."
When asked about his plans for his career once he eventually hangs up his boots, Puyol joked that he would not become Barca club president and his fellow centre-half Gerard Pique had his eyes on that job.
"I do not want to be Barca president, like Pique," he said. "I will let him have that job, as he is my friend."