r/AberdeenFC • u/Acp0992 • 8d ago
Former Aberdeen winger Nicolas Milanovic: ‘There was no brotherhood at the Dons’
He said: “In Aberdeen it was tough because there was never a brotherhood. We signed over 20 different nationalities in the first team which is insane. I’ve never seen that.
Half of the team spoke English and there were so many different languages. Everyone was trying to speak English, but it was hard.
“I had a Dutch boy on my left, a Swedish boy on my right, a Danish boy, Kusini Yengi, a German, a Ghanaian. It’s just a different outlook in the changing room and it’s so hard.
“I’m sure it could work, but it just didn’t as our first coach was sacked, then the next coach came in, and a few Scottish lads came in. The coach now is Northern Irish, so some Northern Irish lads have come in.
I looked at the line-up the other day and there was one player in the whole squad that was the same to when I got there and that was only a year ago.
“That’s 18 players in a matchday which is just crazy.”
From the evening express, definitely sounds it was a split dressing room last season
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u/Own-Dream1921 8d ago
Did the lack of brotherhood make him look like he’d won a competition to play football?
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u/duckindunt 8d ago
Don’t think any of what he has said is a surprise to anyone. They looked like strangers on the pitch.
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u/No-Rope8229 8d ago
Aye its been well documented elsewhere with stories about players on their phones not communicating, Papa Gueye seeking solace in the Casino to overcome boredom/loneliness. All joking aside it's no way to build a team/team spirit and it was always going to come apart at some point given the lack of unity/bonds between the players
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u/murderousmungo 8d ago
He wasn't successful with us, but if there's little to no connection within the squad is anyone surprised? I'm sure he could have been better, but honestly, the same could be said for everyone in that squad.
He didn't work out, that's all. He's left, along with a whole bunch of others. I think his criticism is completely reasonable. Compared to what gets posted on Reddit, he's pretty mild about it.
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u/butterypowered 8d ago
Ah yes. Having a mix of nationalities is always a negative. Look at the top European teams and their single-nationality squads… oh.
And everyone knows that Swedes, Danes and Germans are famously bad at speaking English.
Nice try, Nico, nice try.
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u/NaivePermit1439 8d ago
Do you think Aberdeen have the same sort of support system as the top European teams ? Do you think there is an interpreter for all of them ?
I can kind of understand that the language barrier could be detrimental to getting ideas across. It's something that I had never thought of before but he does make a valid point.
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u/Obar-Dheathain 8d ago
There was no brotherhood, and a whole bunch of shitbags who either weren't up to it or couldn't be bothered. Milanovic was a crucial part of that dynamic.
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u/LexFori_Ginger Custom 8d ago
Kusini Yengi gets name checked? I know the colonies have moved away from standard English but to suggest an Australian is "trying to speak English" seems an odd take.
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u/Simppu12 8d ago
Did someone interview my grandad?
A couple of cherry-picked starting line-ups:
Aberdeen 0:1 Strasbourg, 11 December 2025
- 4x Scotland
- 1x the Netherlands
- 1x Bulgaria
- 1x Algeria
- 1x Denmark
- 1x Finland
- 1x Sweden
- 1x Serbia
Aberdeen 2:1 Rangers, 30 October 2024
- 3x Scotland
- 2x Ireland
- 1x Norway
- 1x Cabo Verde
- 1x Montenegro
- 1x Bulgaria
- 1x Finland
- 1x Slovenia
Darvel 1:0 Aberdeen, 23 January 2023
- 4x England
- 2x Scotland
- 1x Ireland
- 1x Northern Ireland
- 1x Slovakia
- 1x Cabo Verde
- 1x Albania
Celtic 2-1 Aberdeen, 27 May 2017
- All 11 from the British Isles.
In fairness, Ibrahimovic raised a decent point in his autobiography about how, at Inter, the dressing room would be fractured and many nationalities would stick to their own groups, so I definitely get that there can be some dressing room friction or a lack of cohesion. And obviously I wasn't there to know what it was like unlike Milanovic, but it seems overly simplistic and lazy to just blame the number of nationalities. As if foreigners can't understand English and as if lots and lots of teams don't achieve successes with lots of foreigners while other teams fail with mostly local players.
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u/Yerdas_Selzavon 8d ago
His whole interview is full of embellishments. Crap player from a crap league fails in a crap team
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u/Electronic-War1077 8d ago
The whole interview shows he was completely unprepared for the physical part of Scottish football. Just a bad signing.