During the half-time interval of that contest, which the Rossoneri lost 2-1, England international Walker was caught in conversation with fellow loan star Felix – with both men currently at San Siro after bidding farewell to the Premier League at Manchester City and Chelsea respectively.

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  THE BIGGER PICTURE

  Portuguese forward Felix was, in Walker’s mind, overcomplicating matters with some of his play. He was advised to keep things simple in the second half, with the 25-year-old being told “pass the ball, nobody here is Messi”.

• WHAT KYLE WALKER SAID

  On The Kyle Walker Podcast, the experienced defender who uttered those words said: “It wasn’t me saying to Joao ‘you’re not Messi, pass the ball’. It was saying ‘let’s make sure we have a process’. He agreed with me and said we need to have more passes and a bit more control.

  “I didn’t just say it to Joao. I didn’t know there was a camera there. But I still wouldn’t have changed anything I did say.”

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  DID YOU KNOW?

  Walker added: “The comment I said was nobody is Messi. That’s in every team in the world bar certain individuals who can turn a game on its head when they want to. I give them their plaudits – it’s Kylian Mbappe, Vinicius Jr, Mo Salah and Ousmane Dembele, who has been on fire since the start of the year. Apart from that you say it’s a team game.

  “What I was saying to Joao is [Rafael] Leao is fantastic. One of the players who you can give him the ball and he can go past three, four, five players and put it in the top bin. At [Manchester] City most of our joy over the last number of years was from a process. Everything was the process of working out where you were on the pitch. That was with passes.

  “If you have a player like Messi he can take on four players and put it in the back of the net. It makes the game so much easier. But against good-level opposition like Napoli I feel you need a process of passing the ball and wearing them down. Then the gaps appear. That was the conversation with Joao.”

• WHAT NEXT?

  Milan had cause for celebration in their latest outing, as they claimed a 3-0 victory over arch-rivals Inter and a place in the Coppa Italia final. Walker, who has been nursing an injury, played no part in that contest while Felix was only introduced as an 87th-minute substitute.