The Totally Football Show · The Athletic

Totally Tomori: James Horncastle meets Fikayo in Milan

March 7, 2026·26 min·2 clips

Paolo Maldini called Fikayo Tomori to ask him to stay at AC Milan, a moment the defender found surreal.

Milan gets the Saturday extra. After the network housekeeping and a quick hello, James Horncastle sets up the visit as a chat with one of the locals at Milan. Not Franco Baresi, not Paolo Maldini, mind. Things get useful when the conversation turns to intensity, because Tomori does not treat it as another word for running harder. In England, he says, intensity often means getting into opponents and keeping the tempo high. In Italy, the strain feels more mental. That sounds tidy at first. Then he makes it messier, in a good way: preparation, fans, expectation, concentration, and pressure all crowd the same defender at once. Serie A is tactical, sure, but the pressure James points to is more physical than a chalkboard. It lives in the stadiums and in the size of the occasions, unlike anywhere he has felt in Europe. Argentina gets a sideways nod too. Tomori's point is simple enough and horrible to play against. Italian teams can wait for one player in an eleven to switch off, then go straight through that opening. There is no soft landing. He talks through the defensive maths: if one opponent moves here, you go there, unless a teammate covers, unless he does not. Very relaxing, obviously. That detail is what saves the old Italian football cliche from sounding polished for a museum. Language adds another problem. Tomori says he did not speak Italian, so he had to process information while still playing, communicating, and staying locked into the game. That is the hook. By the end, intensity sounds less like sweat from running and more like a defender's brain trying to keep eleven doors closed for ninety minutes.

As heard by us

Tomori explains why Italian football's intensity is so often mental.

James Horncastle takes the Totally Football Show to Milan for a focused conversation with Tomori, a Milan and England defender who has spent five years in the city.

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Why you'd press play

Hear Milan and England defender Fikayo Tomori unpack why Italian football's intensity is as much mental as physical.

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