Welcome to Calcio Square, an email newsletter dedicated to Serie A and Italian football. I publish essays every Monday and Thursday. You can email me with feedback at hello@calciosquare.com.

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Now, onto today's issue.

Like Pietro Balzano Prota, a notable AC Milan fan who couldn't quite find the words to describe the latest episode in this soap opera of a season, I typed out and binned around a dozen tweets before giving up and letting a GIF of Jose Mourinho do the talking.

I didn't want to pour gasoline on the tire fire that was already billowing at San Siro, where Milan lost yet again under a barrage of whistles and jeers and chants against unpopular American owner Gerry Cardinale. I felt the tension through the TV. I could only imagine how it felt to play there.

The environment has obviously unsettled the team. Head coach Sergio Conceicao, who has threatened to leave on multiple coaches, has transmitted his own palpable nervous energy to his players, and the directors have said nothing of consequence. Cardinale hasn't shown his face in months.

There were bad calls, bad plays, and bad decisions in Sunday's 2-1 defeat to Lazio. They make up much of Milan's current existence. Strahinja Pavlovic was sent off for a last-man tackle that wasn't really a last-man tackle. Joao Felix was pushed in the back in the penalty area without justice being done. Gustav Isaksen earned a late penalty despite kicking the ball out of play. There were also turnovers. So many turnovers. Yunus Musah was hooked before halftime. Theo Hernandez dogged on another play. Youssouf Fofana lost the ball before Pavlovic dove into that desperate tackle. At one point Milan were playing with five attackers and one center-back.

Milan's games always turn into these types of shootouts. They lose control of the game within minutes and have to chase results, leaving their fate in the hands of referees and outside factors. Anything can and will happen when they step on the pitch. Conceicao has been coaching this team for two months, and it has only gotten worse. It may seem entertaining to outsiders who have no skin in the game, but even to those lucky neutrals, it isn't entertainment in the way movies and television shows entertain us. It's entertainment in the way jesters once pleased royalty.

It's tragically poetic that Milan slipped to ninth place — below Roma, who passed the baton of futility to the Rossoneri — while wearing a jersey that has nothing to do with Milan. The red-and-green mishmash of a shirt concocted by high fashion label Off-White wasn't made with the average fan in mind. It was made to attract dollars from fair-weather clout-chasers.

The play on the field was enough to alienate fans. These latest marketing inventions have left many more wondering what the hell this club is even about anymore.

You can win and lose matches — and so many teams lose more than they win — but the one thing that sustains fandom is the feeling that you belong to something that means something. What do Milan mean these days? What more are Milan than a brand hollowed out for all its worth, buoyed only temporarily by sponsors who will undoubtedly flee if another season is wasted by a presumptuous management team that has in two years replaced a championship-winning team with a laughable iteration of Moneyball.

So while it doesn't help when fans boo and jeer and chant against ownership, compounding the negativity that already exists in a must-win home match, it's all fans can be expected to do. Cardinale made himself a social pariah when he fired Paolo Maldini as technical director, eroding any goodwill he had from the start. Results became his most valuable currency, and they haven't come. He hasn't bothered to meet Curva Sud, whose thousands of members dictate the atmosphere at San Siro, in any attempt to address their concerns that this institution is being run into the ground by what they consider out-of-touch ownership.

This isn't just a crisis of form. It's more significant than that. It's a fight for Milan's soul. The fans have every right to wage it.