What has become of the mighty milan?

remember this lineup?

dida cafu stam nesta madini

gattusso pirlo seedorf kaka

shevchenko crespo.

World class in every position. They might not have been as successful as they should but i'd say that was probably the most formidable team of the 2000s(along with 08/09 barca). On their day day they could outclass anyone(manu, bayern, capello's juve). Seriously, how can you go from that to today's sea of mediocrity, with silva and ibra likely to leave. It never seemd to me that milan were profligate spenders. Most of those guys they got for next to nothing, or firesale prices. I'm no football finance buff so can someone tell me what the hell happened?

if we sell TS i hope we rot in midtable

Although TS is one of the top CB's in the World, surely there are others who have a lot potential and can play CB for AC Milan.

mtfootball wrote:Although TS is one of the top CB's in the World, surely there are others who have a lot potential and can play CB for AC Milan.

mate,we are not going to spend 1 cent from that money

come on have faith Ganso,

on Topic, they have become PSG's feeder club

i wouldnt call 2 CLs "not very succesful". Barca is called the greatest team in history and they have less CL finals than that Milan. Anyway, the reason for the decline is very simple, lack of interest/investement from the owners. just look how Inter went from world beaters to EL in 2 years for he same reason and it wouldnt be much of a surprise

Ibrahimovic is 31 this year.

Swedish media has already said that unless Milan plans on getting new players/showing some ambition he is leaving and selling Thiago Silva is going to make him leave imo.

You know if Milan take the cash they can get for Ibra and Silva and reinvest smartly, something Galliani can do, then I think they can raise the quality across the field to make up for these two players.

halamadrid2 wrote:only a good striker will cost you around 30 mill, and then if they want to get average players and pay on instalments or get free agents then lmfao

Well if you look at our key signings at the start of last season Pirlo (free), Vidal (€10.5), Lichtsteiner (€10), Vucinic (€15) then the €40-50 for TS and whatever they get for Ibra the money is surely there to build something solid?

Milan have quality players we don't, TS and Ibra are absolute match winners and while I'm not looking to pick a fight the rest of the side doesn't match up to them. Call me crazy but even in selling one of their best players (let's wait and see what Ibra decides) does not necessarily mean that the only way is down. Spent in the right areas I think as a team overall they could even improve.

Milan arent going to spend any amount of those money ...

:{Mr.Mustachio! wrote:You know if Milan take the cash they can get for Ibra and Silva and reinvest smartly, something Galliani can do, then I think they can raise the quality across the field to make up for these two players.

None of the cash that they earn from the sale of those two players would be used on transfers. That money would go towards balancing the books. Berlu has clearly lost interest in this club and unless he changes his attitude or Milan is sold, I'm afraid Milan will fall into mediocrity.

Cookie Monster wrote:

:{Mr.Mustachio! wrote:You know if Milan take the cash they can get for Ibra and Silva and reinvest smartly, something Galliani can do, then I think they can raise the quality across the field to make up for these two players.

None of the cash that they earn from the sale of those two players would be used on transfers. That money would go towards balancing the books. Berlu has clearly lost interest in this club and unless he changes his attitude or Milan is sold, I'm afraid Milan will fall into mediocrity.

Well in that case everything I said is futile then...that sucks man. Italy really needs a strong Milan and Udinese next season. What is Berlisconi doing

I like this more

I dont know man. I'd say the squads are pretty comparable. Sacchi's team gets a lot of credit for revolutionizing tactics and winning back to back cls, but they only won serie a once in 4 years i believe. some seasons not even in the top two. not to mention back then euro cup had no english teams(strongest league pre-heysel)and 1 team per country. the 2000s squad might have reached 3 finals in a row(4 in 5 years) if sheva's goal hadnt been disallowed . Both defenses are ridiculous, but ive never seen as balanced a mf as carlo's. any one of pirlo seedor or kaka could win a match on a given day. Up front gullit and mvb probably edge it, but sheva and crespo are also among the best of their era. Even as juve fan i loved to watch this team

The market has become way too inflated for Milan to operate succesfully without incurring huge operation cost's. These costs were balanced out by Berlusconi every year, these losses amounted up too 30 - 60 million each financial cycle >>That is the equivalent of a world class player transfer fee right there.

Also the rent on the San Siro has finally taken it's toll on us as we have lost close to half a billion on renting the san siro alone , add this with Inter's rent as well and you'd understand why the Milan Council bathe in cash, and worse still, when they were inquired for the possibility of purchase of the san siro they responded with an unrealistic figure that was way beyond reasonable and fair.

Our recent model was that of acquiring players who's contracts are expiring and offering them a higher wage with lower transfer fees , also that it has become norm now that every 4 or so years we sell our most valuable asset to the highest bidder and all of the transfer profit will go to balancing out the remaining debt for that financial year alone. But there is a inherent flaw with this business model, the most obvious to point out is that even though we don't pay much with regard to transfer fee's our squad's total wages increased each year, which led to higher operating costs , which meant our dept increased and structurally we had become even more dysfunctional.

All this had a snow ball effect to which it became imperative that we keep some of our older players, or risk facing a situation where huge amounts of experience and quality is lost that needs to be replaced quickly if the team were to be competitive again, this was impossible due to our financial situation. Also Berlusconi as acting Prime Minister of Italy could not afford to spend lavishly on a mere football club when Italy were in economic crisis. Milan management had effectively become a balancing act between maintaining squad competitiveness and keeping our debt under control.

So what basically happened was we spent too much on acquiring players ( Zlatan, Binho, K.P , Mexes, Cassano , SES, MvB , Nocerino, Mesbah , Didac , Taiwo) in terms of wages we exceeded our limit to maintain all these players within our budget, not only this but we went on to win Serie A and many of our players was awarded with more fruitful contracts. This led to us having the highest paid squad ever in Milan's history , obviously as i mentioned before something had to give. Galliani thought the retiring players might easy our financial burden as well as being more stingy when handing out new contracts. But it seems Thiago will have to be the sacrificial lam of some sorts to easy our immediate situation.

This will be the first time i can think of were we sell a Milan player in his prime as well as the best defender in the squad. Given the choice between Zlatan and T.S , i would have sold Zlatan, mainly due to the fact that he won't able to carry the team for as long as Silva would have , given that Centrebacks can maintain a high lvl of play well into their mid thirties.

Plastic, billionaiire play thing clubs is what's happening. It's not Milan or Silva's fault. When someone is offering a fee of 50 mill for a defender, and is also offering obscene amount of wages for the said player, it is very hard to turn down for both parties.

FFP cannot come soon enough.

We need an Arab or Russian (or maybe Chinese) billionaire to buy us. Europeans won't spend on big clubs anymore. Or, the league have to adopt the Spanish TV money split and give most of the money to two teams. AC Milan and another team, don't care which one.

leemhuis wrote:We need an Arab or Russian (or maybe Chinese) billionaire to buy us. Europeans won't spend on big clubs anymore. Or, the league have to adopt the Spanish TV money split and give most of the money to two teams. AC Milan and another team, don't care which one.

why? i thought Berlusconi was a billionaire and he could inject money in the club at anytime?

Mr Nick09 wrote:

leemhuis wrote:We need an Arab or Russian (or maybe Chinese) billionaire to buy us. Europeans won't spend on big clubs anymore. Or, the league have to adopt the Spanish TV money split and give most of the money to two teams. AC Milan and another team, don't care which one.

why? i thought Berlusconi was a billionaire and he could inject money in the club at anytime?

(un)fortunately he cannot steal from public money anymore

Mr Nick09 wrote:

leemhuis wrote:We need an Arab or Russian (or maybe Chinese) billionaire to buy us. Europeans won't spend on big clubs anymore. Or, the league have to adopt the Spanish TV money split and give most of the money to two teams. AC Milan and another team, don't care which one.

why? i thought Berlusconi was a billionaire and he could inject money in the club at anytime?

football is a sport and sport is a business for some people, berlusconi is one of those people. he is a billionaire and can inject money into his club at any point, but with the current financial situation in europe and the possible upcoming crisis in italy i dont think it would be smart investing in milan for now.