AC Milan smashed their transfer record this summer when they forked out a whopping €74m to sign striker Gonçalo Ramos from Paris Saint-Germain as the club attempts to solve its striking woes.
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The Portuguese international shot to prominence at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar as he ousted the iconic Cristiano Ronaldo from Portugal’s starting line-up and proceeded to score a stunning hat trick in the 6-1 Round of 16 demolition of Switzerland.
Six months later, he made the move to the French capital, and 45 goals and back-to-back UEFA Champions League trophies have since followed. Now, he makes the move to the Rossoneri as the Italian giants look to return to Scudetto contention, but online betting sites still think that the club could have a difficult time reeling in their cross-city rivals, despite the sizable outlay on Ramos.
Websites accepting soccer bets online make defending champions Inter the clear even money favourite to win Serie A once again this season, with Milan a distant 11/2 fourth-favourite.
Milan’s Scudetto hopes
Whether the signing of Ramos is enough to yield the Scudetto or not remains to be seen, but one thing that the Rossoneri will be hoping is that the addition of the former Benfica youngster brings to an end a miserable run of disastrous striker signings.
Across the last three years, Milan have spent well over €100m on new strikers with little to no success, and that’s without mentioning other expensive disasters, such as Krzysztof Piatek, Ante Rebić, and Gonzalo Higuain.
Ramos’ €74m addition makes him not only Milan’s most expensive ever striker, but the club’s most expensive signing outright. But which other strikers have joined the club for monster fees over the years? And crucially, were those signings a success or a failure? Let’s take a look.
André Silva (€38m): Failure
Milan will be hoping that their newest Portuguese addition fares far better than the last striker they signed from the country. Back in the summer of 2017, the Rossoneri stumped up €38m to sign 21-year-old striker André Silva from boyhood club FC Porto in a deal that certainly raised plenty of eyebrows.
The young hitman had completed just two seasons of senior football but did make waves in the second of them, netting 21 goals in all competitions as the Dragons finished second in the Primeira Liga.
Manager Vincenzo Montella, a legendary former striker himself, moved heaven and earth to sign Silva, thinking that the young Portuguese star would be the club’s talisman for the next decade to come. Instead, he netted just two league goals in his maiden season at the San Siro and within a year, he was on his way out.
Loan spells with Sevilla and Eintracht Frankfurt saw Silva’s stock increase somewhat, and he left for the latter of that duo on a permanent basis in the summer of 2020 for just €3m.
Naturally, Silva would almost immediately find his shooting boots. He plundered some 28 league goals in just 32 games in his first permanent season at Frankfurt, prompting RB Leipzig to shell out €23m to secure his signature.
Since then, he has bounced around the likes of Real Sociedad, Werder Bremen, and Elche, before returning to Porto earlier this summer. There can be no denying that his stint with Milan was a failure, and an abject one at that.
Christopher Nkunku (€37m): Failure
A year ago, it was Christopher Nkunku who was brought in to finally add some much-needed firepower to a goal-shy Milan lineup. The Rossoneri paid €37m to secure the Frenchman’s services from Chelsea, despite injuries limiting him to just six league goals across the two seasons immediately preceding the move.
However, if the French international could rediscover the form he showcased across his four years with RB Leipzig, then Milan would have one hell of a striker on their hands.
Unfortunately, in his maiden campaign at the San Siro, he couldn’t. It took 11 games for Nkunku to net his first goal for the club, and by the time the curtain came down on a disappointing campaign, he had managed just eight goals across 35 appearances.
That return very much puts him in failure territory, but with the former PSG youngster still on the club’s books heading into the 2026/27 season, he still has time to turn things around.
Filippo Inzaghi (€36.15m): Success
You have to go all the way back to the summer of 2001 for Milan’s fourth most expensive striker signing ever. That, of course, was the €36.15m deal to secure the services of legendary striker Filippo Inzaghi from rivals Juventus, a man who would go on to become one of the Rossoneri’s greatest ever goalscorers.
‘Pippo’ netted 126 goals in 300 appearances in the famed red and black stripes, including a poacher’s brace in the 2-1 2007 UEFA Champions League final win against Liverpool in Athens. That result saw Milan claim the ‘Big-Eared’ trophy for the seventh time and banished the ghosts from that horrifying collapse against the Reds in Istanbul two years prior, forever cementing Inzaghi’s legacy as a Milan hero in the process.