Milan have had a dreadful season. With one game remaining of the Serie A season they sit in a depressing eighth position. They have lost almost as many games as they have won in the league (15 wins and 13 defeats) and seen one unsuccessful manager, Massimiliano Allegri, replaced by another, Clarence Seedorf.

True, i Rossoneri did reach the last 16 of the Champions League but there they were thrashed by Atlético Madrid and the club that have won seven European Cups and were used to having some of the world's best players in their ranks (Ruud Gullit, Marco van Basten, Frank Rijkaard and, more recently, Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Thiago Silva) now have to content themselves with Adel Taarabt, Sulley Muntari and Nigel de Jong.

It is fair to say that Milan and their chief executive, Adriano Galliani, have been in need of some good news for a long time. Thankfully, for the club and for the fans, it arrived this week in the shape of 15-year-old Hachim Mastour, a wonderfully skilful trequartista born in Italy by Moroccan parents, who was promoted to the first team with no little fanfare.

First Mastour, who turns 16 in June, had breakfast with Galliani and Seedorf. Then he was taken to the changing rooms where he was applauded by the entire first-team squad. Finally he trained with the first team (in front of the Milan TV cameras) and, obviously, scored a goal.

There is no doubt that he is an exceptional talent but is the timing right for him to be promoted to the first team? Milan, as said, are eighth and, win or lose at home to Sassuolo , they will have had one of their worst seasons in memory. On the other hand a cameo from one of the most talented young footballers in the world on the last day of the season would create a positive atmosphere at the end of a gruesome campaign and give supporters hope ahead of the next.

Too cynical? Perhaps. Age should not be a barrier to first-team football, at either end of the spectrum, and maybe it is already too late to protect Mastour. Milan signed him, from Reggiana, for a reported €500,000 (£408,000) in 2012. Some pressure. Internazionale definitely wanted to sign him as did Barcelona and Real Madrid and, reportedly, Manchester City.

How does a 14-year-old possibly react to that kind of pressure? The history of football is full of wonderkids but also full of young players who fall by the wayside. "Italian football is a specialist in fenomeno," wrote the excellent Andrea Schianchi in La Gazzetta dello Sport on Wednesday, "to launch them and then to forget them in a provincial dressing room."

The sad truth is that Italy are not the only ones. It happens all over the world, from Freddy Adu to Michael Johnson, from Bojan Krkic to Cherno Samba. That is the way football is, for bad or worse, and ask any football-interested 15-year-old in the world if he would like to swap with Mastour and it is a fair chance that pretty much all of them would say yes.

On Sunday night Mastour will become the youngest ever Milanista to have played in Serie A if he makes his debut. He will be the fifth youngest ever in the history of the league after Amedeo Amadei, Giovanni Rivera, Aristide Rossi and Giuseppe Campione. And it is perhaps poignant that he could make his debut against Sassuolo, the team who provided Milan with arguably their most humiliating defeat this season. The newcomers, playing in Serie A for the first time in their 94-year-history, had not won a game for over a month in December when they proceeded to beat Milan 4-3 with 19-year-old Domenico Berardi scoring all four goals.

"It is impossible to take the ball from Hachim," the Allievi (Milan's under-17s) coach, Omar Danesi, told Gazzetta. "He can run at breakneck speed. He has grown so much this year, especially in his work with the rest of the team. He is very young and there is a lot of scope for improvement. For the talent he has he is definitely a player to play at the San Siro [for Milan]. But he is very young and should be allowed to grow with calmness."

It has not quite worked out that way.

Remember him?

Freddy Adu

Dubbed the next Pelé, the American he signed a pro contract in MLS at 14. Flopped at Benfica and now clubless

Bojan Krkic

Youngest player at 17 years and 19 days to make Barcelona debut. Now struggling at Ajax

Michael Johnson Hailed as a future England captain, made Man City debut at 18 but mental health issues forced him out of game