Summer mercato 2012
We want to get a lot of the transfer fee up front, not later. Milan has become cheapest team in the world....
This whole situation is not making sense. Galliani says he's there just to talk, saying it's a long negotiation. Braida one day says Thiago's our player, FOR NOW, but the next says he's not leaving. Barbara, who is a bloody director in the club, is apparently pleading to keep him, while our players at the freaking European Championships are pleading with him to stay and threatening to leave the club, when normally players at these tournaments don't speak of club football.

This whole situation is nothing short of madness.

That said, credit to AbbeyLeeMania for making me laugh. He's on R&B forums right now as he's apparently just switched allegiance Bayern lol
Next thing you know Berlusconi will fly to Paris to collect a suitcase
After reading this article, I am starting to understand why Galliani is tempted to sell Thiago Silva: http://swissramble.blogspot.no/2012/05/m...signs.html

The author really does a good job of showing how ridiculously fucked we are financially. I had no idea Milan's problems were this big, and it really does seem like we have no choice but to sell players if we want to be able to play in the Champions League after 2014. We can't afford more than a €45 million loss over the next two years if we don't want to be excluded from the CL, and the problem is that we're losing money like crazy. Our wage bill is incredibly high, and we're not actually making enough money to cover it without the help of Fininvest. Our biggest problem at the moment is that we don't have our own stadium. Match day revenue for other big clubs elsewhere in Europe is much higher than ours. Like the article says, our match day revenue was only €36 million last year. Man Utd made more than €100 million more, while Arsenal also made almost just as much.

In short, I think the sale of Thiago Silva is only the beginning of a period that will be really painful for everybody who loves Milan. Barbara Berlusconi was right when she said that we have to change our business model, because the way the club is being run now is just unsustainable in the long run. But this is going to be a long process, slowed down by the general financial problems in Italy and the lack of legislation that makes it possible for us to build our own stadium. We have to move from the San Siro sooner or later, but this might take another ten years, if not more. In the mean time, I think we'll just have to forget about any European ambitions.

What I think Galliani should be criticized for is not being honest about the situation. If we don't sell Thiago Silva this year, we will have to sell him (or another top player) next year instead. That is the only way we can break even, because there is no other way we can reduce our losses enough to comply with the new FFP rules. If he had said early on that Milan is in a bad financial situation, then I think the fans would have been much more understanding of his decision.

The only consolation is that our nerazzurri cousins are much, much worse off. While we have lost €145 million over the last three years, they have lost more than €300 million.
Selling Thiago isn't likely to help our long term finances, just as selling Kaka in the past wasn't. The club has mismanaged it's finances for years and now the plan is to try and sell our stars for as much as possible? Unlike clubs like Udinese who have an impressive scouting system in place to do this frequently, as well as accepting their position as a mid-tier side that's attempting to grow with a strict financial structure in place, we're a club that's for years been overspending and doesn't have the youth, scouting or financial structure in place to have a self-sustainable model in place.

I've been saying for the best part of a decade now that this had to change as this way we wouldn't be able to sustain the current structure. Our youth investment started too late and we never got the initial investment needed to phase in such a project. Instead the club spent the years overspending on needless salaries and purchasing players who can only offer performances on the pitch for a year or two before needing replacement. If I'm honest, I think that's part of the reason I wasn't so upset in seeing a lot of senators leaving this summer, as these guys should have been getting phased out back in 2007 with a younger, cheaper (at least salary wise) generation that could sustain competitiveness for another 5-6 years. Had we invested in our youth when we should have, we'd have players ready to start looking to play an important part of the first team squad now or in the next couple of years, rather than a realistic target of around 2015-2016 when our current upcoming youth are hopefully ready in the early-mid 20s.

Oh, as for using the stadiums as an excuse for the poor state of Italian football, this is a massive failing of Italian football. Spain, England and Germany have been investing as necessary in the infrastructure of the sport for years, with clubs looking to improve their stadiums and facilities over time to get where they are, not necessarily as a result of a major tournament, even if Germany had a lot of support for 2006. Italy showed arrogance during this time as Italian teams were top and stood still, letting Italian football stagnate rather than evolve.
Oh and I think Cassano is absolutely right to leave if we sell Silva. As he said, the club isn't being clear with the fans, and that is inexcusable.
(06-12-2012, 09:07 PM)ACMILAN1983 Wrote: This whole situation is not making sense. Galliani says he's there just to talk, saying it's a long negotiation. Braida one day says Thiago's our player, FOR NOW, but the next says he's not leaving. Barbara, who is a bloody director in the club, is apparently pleading to keep him, while our players at the freaking European Championships are pleading with him to stay and threatening to leave the club, when normally players at these tournaments don't speak of club football.

This whole situation is nothing short of madness.

That said, credit to AbbeyLeeMania for making me laugh. He's on R&B forums right now as he's apparently just switched allegiance Bayern lol

I was there too. Do you think that he is for real though? Big Grin Either way, nice trolling though.
aka xudong
Like Dev says, there is no evidence that these kind of moves will be beneficial. It's great to be optimistic and think this is good for the long term but I don't see it.

FFP should be affecting dozens of teams more than Milan, I am still as convinced of this after reading that swissramble article than I was before reading it.

(06-12-2012, 09:21 PM)ACMILAN1983 Wrote: Selling Thiago isn't likely to help our long term finances, just as selling Kaka in the past wasn't. The club has mismanaged it's finances for years and now the plan is to try and sell our stars for as much as possible? Unlike clubs like Udinese who have an impressive scouting system in place to do this frequently, as well as accepting their position as a mid-tier side that's attempting to grow with a strict financial structure in place, we're a club that's for years been overspending and doesn't have the youth, scouting or financial structure in place to have a self-sustainable model in place.

You're absolutely right. Selling Thiago Silva is just a short term solution to a much bigger problem. But our problems will only grow bigger if we're excluded from the CL, which is what will happen if we don't sell star players every now and then. If we miss out on that revenue, then we're probably going to be an upper mid-table side for years. Because that's all that we'll be able to afford.


(06-12-2012, 09:26 PM)reza Wrote: Like Dev says, there is no evidence that these kind of moves will be beneficial. It's great to be optimistic and think this is good for the long term but I don't see it.

FFP should be affecting dozens of teams more than Milan, I am still as convinced of this after reading that swissramble article than I was before reading it.

Yeah that's the part I can't figure out either. How the hell can PSG afford to pay so much for players when it means that they'll have no chance of breaking even in the next two years? They're not even in the European top 10 as far as income is concerned.
But we will have clean freaking books. Nobody else has to have it, but we do.

Perhaps its the secret masterplan by Berlu. Perhaps Real, Barcelona, Chelsea, City and the rest of big clubs wont be allowed into CL because of their minuses, so it will be automatically given to us for a few years Big Grin