That is how it looked in late January. PSV had been scouting him for some time, and Cissè, then on loan at Catanzaro from Hellas Verona, thought his move was as good as done.
The Eindhoven club had lined him up to replace Ivan Perišić, who was heading back to Inter.
The Rossoneri hijacked it within two days. Gianluca Di Marzio reported on 30 January that Milan were moving in, and by the next morning they had taken over, agreeing a fee of €8 million plus €1.5 million in bonuses and leaving him at Catanzaro to finish the Serie B season, a condition that mattered as much to the player as the badge.
PSV's technical director Earnest Stewart took it badly. Asked on deadline day whether Milan's move had surprised him, he told VoetbalPrimeur: "No, nothing surprises me. I was annoyed, I can say that. But it is what it is."
He was more specific when he spoke on PSV Play in February.
"We would have liked to sign Alphadjo Cissè, because we had been looking at him for some time," Stewart said. "We saw him as such a reinforcement that we wanted to add him in the winter already."
"He chose AC Milan," he said, before finding one consolation: "If we have to name something positive, it is that AC Milan and PSV are going after the same players. Then we're fishing in the right pond, I think."
"It all happened quickly," Cissè told Repubblica in February. "I was supposed to go to PSV, it was practically done. Then Milan came along and I had no doubts."
He has since gone over the choice again.
"I didn't want to get the decision wrong: PSV wanted me straight away, Milan would let me finish the season in Serie B," he said in an interview with Cronache di Spogliatoio. "We decided this was the right choice. And seeing how it's going, I'd say we were right."
It has gone better than most expected. Cissè started at Torino on 23 August, scored in a 2-1 win and was named Milan's player of the match.
A fortnight later he scored again at Juventus, finishing right-footed between the legs of Pierre Kalulu after a pass from Samuel Chukwueze, only for Federico Gatti to equalise for the hosts in stoppage time. Earlier in November, at Genoa, he put Milan ahead after 13 minutes from an Adrien Rabiot pass, and Christian Pulisic added a second six minutes later as Milan moved top of Serie A.
Not everyone at the club had seen it coming. When he first arrived from Catanzaro, some thought he was only good enough for the Under-23 side.
Ruben Amorim has never been one of them. Il Foglio recorded the Milan coach's verdict in three words: "I love Cissè."
Cissè says the feeling has been returned, in his own way.
"He's a good person, who knows how to deal with us youngsters," he said of Amorim. "And he knows how to keep my feet on the ground. Even though I'm not someone who likes to let his mind fly."
The grounding comes from Treviso. Cissè was born there on 22 October 2006 to Guinean parents, and the family lives in a tower block in the city, where his father Sanoussy works in a factory and his mother Habibatou works as a waitress in a Venice hotel.
"He always loved football so much, at two he was walking round the house with a ball and breaking the windows," Habibatou told Il Nord Est. Paul Pogba was his idol, she said, but he supported Milan and dreamed of Serie A.
He has not changed, she says: "He listens and observes, he has always done that. He has stayed humble."
He started at six on the via Paludetti pitch close to home, then came through Polisportiva Indomita 21 and on to Giorgione in Castelfranco Veneto. Gianfranco Chinellato, who ran the youth side at Indomita, remembered a boy who was "polite, spoke little and enjoyed himself".
Verona signed him in 2020, aged 14, after their youth chief Massimo Margiotta had seen enough. He debuted for the Under-19s at 15 years and four months, and scored 16 goals in 30 Primavera 1 appearances in 2024-25.
Paolo Sammarco, who worked with him at Verona, still talks about the gap that existed between Cissè and his team-mates.
"Cissè does things that others don't do," Sammarco recalled. "That was what Alpha did, he saw plays long before the others. The gap compared with his team-mates was fairly obvious."
Marco Baroni gave him his Serie A debut on the final day of 2023-24, in a 2-2 draw with Inter, and he spent last season at Catanzaro, where he had scored six goals in 22 league games by February.
Alberto Aquilani, who coached him there, says he knew from the first training session.
"From the first day I saw him I realised this lad had something different," Aquilani said. "Right from the first sessions, even the sound the ball made was different."
"A lad with uncommon quality, technical, physical and mental, even though he had come up from the Primavera," he added.
Cissè has not forgotten the challenge Aquilani set him.
"He told me, 'If you don't play at least ten years in Serie A, for me you will have failed,'" he said.
On the pitch, he is hard to pin down. Verona used him anywhere from central midfield to the trequartista role and as a second striker. He is strong, quick to execute and willing to defend, and he has no fear of a mistake. Il Foglio's description was "a stormy footballer".
He names Lionel Messi as his inspiration, but it is Pogba he sees in himself.
"I liked Pogba at Juve too: I see a bit of myself in him in some touches," he said. Asked about comparisons with Lamine Yamal, which began at Verona, he answered: "I have my own path, of course there is the ambition to get to those levels."
The rough edges are still visible. Cissè was substituted at half-time and booked after 32 minutes in Milan's 2-0 home defeat to Ferencváros on 5 November, and he has been open about his fitness.
"I'm not at the top yet, I'm coming back from a long injury," he told Milan supporters at a fans' event after the Torino game.
Italy came next. Roberto Mancini left him out of his September squad, so Cissè played for Silvio Baldini's Under-21s instead, before calling him up for the first time in November.
"Cissè can play both attacking roles, but I have to see him live, because TV is one thing and training is another," Mancini said at the Coverciano camp.
Cissè, who is also eligible for Guinea through his parents, found out on the day of the Ferencváros game.
"I had the match, so I only realised afterwards. I want to show I can belong," he said. "The call was in the air, they had been talking about it for days… but this is my big opportunity."
Mancini left him in the stands for the France game at San Siro on 12 November, though Cissè could still face Belgium in Brussels on Sunday.
Aquilani asked for ten years in Serie A. Cissè, who turned 20 last month, could add a senior Italy debut in Brussels on Sunday.