Summer mercato 2012

[ACMILAN1983]

Not exactly suggesting that mate, but trying to indicate a point:

When you have a young player on the team who is well known, pretty talented and earning decent reviews, you don't send him out to some two-bit team for playing time, hoping he develops the way you want him to.

Hell no, you sit him on OUR TEAM'S bench and develop him along with the team in the EXACT way that you MEAN for him to. Granted he won't get much playing time at first, but thats why he's suppose to be here. He's suppose to have the talent to play himself into the team, into contention with the minutes that are given to him. Isn't that what Kaka and Pato did for us back then? Isn't that how Maldini started off? Not playing for some Gubbio or Torino, but actually subbing into and out of our team, playing and training with our first team players and learning the ropes and the proper system from the team.

Sending younger talent down for development makes sense. But sending players on the fringe of/already playing for the first team down to teams that don't even play our type of football accomplishes what exactly?

I can't disagree with pretty much any of that, though I think this is a problem mostly in Italian football. Big clubs don't trust these youngsters enough to perform at the top level and I think if they did keep them as well as others they do trust, then we'd end up with squads similar in size to what we had this last year, which is too big.

Let's ignore that he was part of the El Shaarawy transfer for the moment, had we kept Merkel in place of Seedorf this season, would we have suffered much? In truth, Seedorf brought his experience in CL to good effect, but beyond that my answer is a big no. Seedorf and Merkel (in Genoa) played on par when considering what each brought to their teams in Serie A. Merkel, despite playing less has more assists, though this is countered as Seedorf scored more. Defensively, Merkel was more effective than Seedorf this season. Simply put, had we kept Merkel in Seedorf's place this season, we'd have a youngster gaining invaluable experience (both in football and in the culture and traditions of the club) at the highest level who may not provide the experience or leadership the elder player might, but is likely to work harder for the team and be less problematic in the dressing room.

There are other examples like this too. The key is finding the balance in the squad between players with experience and youth. I think in Italy, there's too much reliance on those who have won in the past, rather than looking to maintain a balance within the squad.