The future of Rafael Leao will almost certainly be used to judge how ambitious RedBird Capital Group are as Milan owners, a report claims.
As has been reported by Calciomercato.com, fans will be watching very closely over the next couple of months to see whether AC Milan manages to renew the contract of Leao or not.
The Portuguese forward has hit his best form again and he scored twice against Lecce at the weekend to keep Milan in the fight for the Champions League.
It is believed that there is enough money at the club to pay Leao a wage that will keep him at the club, but if RedBird chooses to sell him instead, it could be viewed as an unambitious move.
Whilst Milan’s owner is pushing firmly for a new stadium to boost revenues, fans will want to see the same ambition in a sporting sense and Leao’s renewal is a way to show that.
RedBird should make a real and sound statement renewing the man’s contract.
To some degree this is true, but Leao’s situation with Sporting is ridiculous and very uncommon to have gone on this long without a resolution. He’s the only player involved with the incident at Sporting that doesn’t have clarity in his situation going forward.
The situation the club are in sucks because they don’t even know if they are in the clear to sell him without Sporting or Lille coming after them for part of that sale in the future. It’s ridiculous that the issue is still ongoing and in the appeal process. It puts Milan in a nearly impossible situation of making decisions that they don’t know the actual outcome of, although one could also say it’s partly their fault as well for buying Leao with this ongoing in the first place.
Overall the whole thing stinks and at least if there was a final resolution, all parties involved could make decisions to move forward in a clear environment.
The agent, as well as lawyers and his former club need to pay the fee, 10 million each. They enabled his unlawful departure, not our team. His agent should be held liable for lost value in the transfer fee on our end if he doesn’t renew and we have to sell. Simply put, if he is valued at 150 million, then we sell for 70 to 80, his agents should have to compensate use the difference for forcing a sale for their mishap, not the other way round. This is extortion on his end.
I believe Redbird already shows that they want to pay Leao about 7-7.5 million /year with some bonus.
But the problem is sporting lisbon 20 million fine. Legally that’s not Milan obligation to pay but Lille or Leao.