SIMON KJÆR: PLAYER FOCUS

Danish defender Simon Kjaer is a new addition to the Rossoneri's backline. AC Milan will be the fourth Serie A club that the 30-year-old has played for after previous spells at Palermo, Roma and Atalanta in Italy. He spent the first six months of this season at the latter on loan from Sevilla. Simon is a very experienced defender who is strong and reads the game well. He's also good in the air, making him an added threat in attack too.

Over the course of his career, he's scored 20 goals in over 400 matches. Most of these have been headers but he's also been no stranger to scoring directly from dead ball situations, especially while he was on Lille's books in Ligue 1. In doing so, he's demonstrated that he's got unusually good shooting ability for a defender. When it comes to European competition, he's played in either the Champions League or Europa League 45 times, with his last appearance coming in Atalanta's 2-0 victory over Dinamo Zagreb at San Siro.

CAREER
Simon's football career began in 2007 when he was at Midtjylland, the Danish team whose youth ranks he came through. He made a big early impact in the senior game, so much so that Palermo signed him in February 2008. He was at the Rosanero for two seasons, during which he was named Danish footballer of the year in 2009. He then moved to German side Wolfsburg in the summer of 2010 before a one-year loan spell in Italy with Roma followed in 2012. He then played for Lille in France and Fenerbahce in Turkey.

In the summer of 2017, Sevilla came calling. He spent two seasons at the Spanish side prior to making a switch to Atalanta at the start of the current campaign and featuring on six occasions for La Dea, for whom he played both Serie A and Champions League football. Now, his next step will be at AC Milan. Since making his Serie A debut in 2008/09, Kjaer is the Danish player to have played the most matches in the Italian top flight (89).

He made his international debut in June 2009 and has been a key player in the Danish rearguard since then, winning 95 caps and taking part in two World Cups and one European Championship in the process. Together with Jonathan de Guzmán, he's one of two players to have made at least 45 appearances in four of the Top 5 European leagues over the past decade: the Dane has featured 65 times in Ligue 1 and on 57 occasions in the Bundesliga, while he has also played 46 matches in both Serie A and La Liga. 

The official PUMA match kits for the 2019/20 season are available in the AC Milan Online Store!