Modric Speaks on Leao's Future at Milan
At Milan, the Leao question refuses to go away. Now Luka Modric has stepped into the debate – calmly, respectfully, but with a clarity that cuts through the transfer noise.
Rafael Leao, the electric winger who has carried Milan’s attack for much of the last seven years, made it clear at the end of the 2025-26 season that he was tempted by a new challenge. For a club already bracing for a year without Champions League football, the prospect of losing its most explosive forward has hovered over the summer like a storm cloud.
Modric, though, is not in the business of telling Leao what to do.
“No, I don’t want to give him advice,” he told La Gazzetta dello Sport, choosing his words with the care of someone who has lived through more than one high-profile crossroads. “Rafa is mature enough to know what’s best for him. He knows how much the fans and the club love him. He’s a great player and it’s great to have him here. He just has to work hard and give his best for Milan, as he always has done.”
No pressure. Just a reminder of what Leao already means to this team and this stadium.
Modric did not gloss over the obvious. Last season was not Leao’s finest. The winger’s rhythm was broken by physical problems, his bursts of brilliance interrupted by injuries that dulled his edge and disrupted his consistency. The numbers dipped, the doubts grew.
“Maybe he’s not coming off the best season, he had a couple of injuries and wasn’t feeling at his best physically, but he’s still a great footballer,” Modric said. Then came the line that will echo around Milanello. “In my opinion, if he were to stay, it would be fantastic for all of us because he’s one of the best in the world when he’s at his peak.”
For a 38-year-old serial winner who has shared dressing rooms with the game’s elite, that is not casual praise. It is a statement of how central a fully fit, fully focused Leao could be to a Milan side trying to reinvent itself without the financial oxygen and sporting prestige of the Champions League.
The timing of Modric’s intervention is no accident. While the market hums and agents talk, Ruben Amorim has been working with the player every day on the training pitches of Australia, where Milan’s pre-season tour has doubled as a test of the squad’s emotional temperature.
If Leao once sounded like a man ready to walk away, the coach is now painting a different picture.
“All the players are working really well: both those who started from day one and those who arrived later,” Amorim said on tour. “Rafa is lucky to be at a club like Milan, so he should be happy. I feel he’s happy and motivated.”
Happy. Motivated. Two words that, if they hold true beyond July and into the grind of the season, change the complexion of Milan’s year.
Inside the camp, the message is consistent. Leao is training, smiling, involved. Outside, the rumours continue to swirl, fuelled by that end-of-season admission that he wanted to test himself elsewhere. The tension between those two realities is where modern football lives: between the badge and the balance sheet, between a player’s ambition and a club’s need to plan.
Modric knows this world too well to pretend otherwise. He did not dress it up.
“As I said, he and the club will decide what the best solution will be,” he concluded, acknowledging the business side without romanticism. Then came the footballer’s verdict, stripped of diplomacy: “But as a footballer, of course I want Rafa in my team.”
That is the heart of it. For Modric, for Amorim, for Milan’s dressing room, the ideal scenario is simple: Leao stays, stays fit, and tears up Serie A again.
Whether the market allows that wish to survive the window is another story entirely.
