While AC Milan are on the verge of being able to announce their eighth summer signing they are looking for more additions, with a centre-back being the most pressing issue.
According to Calciomercato.com, Geoffrey Moncada, Giorgio Furlani and Antonio D’Ottavio have a list of tasks and one of them is to new central defender after Matteo Gabbia’s loan move to join Villarreal.
In recent days, Milan carried out an enquiry for Lenglet, the French defender who has returned to Barcelona after a season-long loan spell at Tottenham in which he played against the Rossoneri.
However, the costs of the operation are considered too high by the management despite the openness of the player to join, given he has refused a move to Saudi Arabia to stay in Europe.
There is little chance of getting that deal over the line and so Maxime Estève’s name is back in fashion. His asking price is €6-7m so Milan could try start up a concrete negotiation with Montpellier in the coming days.
Bingo.
why dont we look at italian market ?
Because we want to play with European style.
Yes because inter who played excellently in the champions league final didn’t run 5 italians because you know… italians aren’t a European style… oh wait…
And two of Inter’s CBs used to play for us!
FYI, that’s not my one-sided claim. The former director revealed it last year in an interview.
The best of Inters team weren’t the Italian players last season.
Man, it’s like beating a dead horse. Because Italian talent is always priced at a premium. Ex. Instead of signing Frattesi we signed RLC and Reijnders for nearly the same amount of money. Instead is spending 30m on 29 year old Berardi we spent 28m on 24 y/o Chukwueze. Instead of spending 30m on Scamacca (who is valued that way because West Ham paid 36m for him last summer), we paid 12m for Okafor. Instead of paying 40m for Scalvini, we’ll pay 7m for Esteve. Etc., etc.
Most importantly, because Italian players are not good.
If Italy was good at producing good players, the starting defense for the Italian NT wouldn’t be old farts Acerbi, Bonucci, and Toloi( who is naturalized Italian)
One thing you could have count on in the past was that Italy can at least produce good defenders , now, they can’t even do that. They have to import defenders.
Toloi, Luis Felipe, Emerson, also Jorginho, Retegui, and who knows who else.
They haven’t missed 2 WC in a row by accident
Exactly ☝️.
And that’s the end of your analysis?
Italians just aren’t good at football?
Italians just forgot how to play football?
You don’t wonder how we got to a stage where one of the biggest footballing nations on the planet just forgot how to play football?
Nothing to do with the failure to develop players?
So who is available? By the way, Inter last season got lucky to even get to a final and their star players weren’t Italian.
Why are you such a whiner?
You are aware Italy hasn’t been in a World cup knockout round since 2006, right
You would have an argument – if we signed stars from other leagues. RLC and Pulisick are injury prone, overpriced rejects. The other signings are up and coming talents. Italy’s failure to qualify for the last 2 WCs wasn’t down to the DF, it was down to the lack of quality in attack, and you’ve conveniently forgotten in between these 2 WC failures was a European Championship win, a tournament in which Italy were the best team in the tournament stylistically and only tailed off because of injuries.
What nobody seems to question is how we ended up in this place?
My theory is Serie A has the highest player turnover of the top 5 leagues.
You can’t have this much movement and expect to develop players or indeed be a competitive league.
Agree with you.
it is quite good for Italian players tho’.. I mean look at the Englishman – Declan Rice, Lord Maguire, Grealish all of them are quite ‘overpriced’ but the EPL teams still buy them with premium price.. it is also a good ‘incentive’ to Italian players to motivate them so that they will try to become good if not best in quality..
“EPL teams still buy them with premium price.” Okay. And how much do EPL clubs earn vs anyone else? FFS.
They’ll never get it. Didn’t you hear RedBird’s last evil plan is to destroy Milan by only signing non-Italians?
So you’re saying it allowed us to go for quantity…..
As for the “quality” part well that’s all relative but one of the factors that can hinder quality is players having to settle into a new team and new league.
Changing jobs and moving house are two of the most stressful things a person can do, and we’re expecting 10-15 (or however number we end up signing) to do all of that AND emigrate AND play in a new league.
Do you know what would’ve been the cheapest option?
Not changing 50% of the squad….
We didn’t change 50% of the squad. Most of our core remains. Ibra retired. Diaz left and Tonali left. Otherwise the same.
And I recall countless, Maybe hundreds of posts here complaining about why the right side of our team doesn’t attack. Doesn’t score. Doesn’t contribute. Why do all attacks go through Leao?
And last season our midfield failed us many times.
So what did we do? Revamp the right side with DEPTH and reinforce the midfield while keeping the rest of the core players.
Also, changing jobs and moving houses might be stressful for you, but for these players it isn’t. Some like Musah lived in Italy most of their lives and this is Italy after all.
Also if a player went from Spain to Italy not a hard adjustment. I would know as I’m from Spain, but have extended family in Italy. And because of many close ties many in continental Europe have together, it’s not a hard move.
And again I bring up Musah. He has an Italian passport.
Current count is 8 new signings and we’re still going. We’ll probably get to 12 new signings which is 50% of a 24 man squad.
Then we’ll have to shift a few. We’ve currently got about 35 players give or take so we’ll need to sell ideally 10 to get us down to a manageable squad size of 25 (2 more than Man City….).
Now the big debate is whether we can change 50% of the squad and still be competitive.
It didn’t work out too well in 17/18.
People complain including and especially me. That’s sort of 90% of internet comments. But my main complaint is about the level of turnover not the individual players.
If the past 15 years is anything to go by what’s probably going to end up happening is I’ll spend the transfer window complaining about the transfers and the season defending the players that I didn’t want signed in the first place against people who were demanding all this change.
It’s not me who finds it hard to adjust (I’ve emigrated four times) it’s most people. That is what psychologists say. And they say that it takes 4-6 months to settle into new jobs. That’s how it has taken me in some jobs. It really depends on the boss and the team.
That’s the issue. It all depends. There are so many variables which determine if a player perform. It’s not a case of plug in and play.
Milan don’t sign Italians because they’re racist. The claim that Italians are overpriced is without merit. Retegui was €10 million, Cancellieri (Italy U21), €8 million, Piamonti €20 million, Parisi €10 million (another player we were linked with). Of course established Serie A players and internationals like Raspadori and Locatelli are more expensive, that’s the same for every nationality. Milan are quoted €20 million for garbage like Lenglet and you’re claiming Italians are overpriced? How are Pulisick and RLC not overpriced? They’re injury prone and inconsistent. The other signings are at market value, but those two aren’t.
Retegui has been Italian for all of 5 minutes. Do we even know if he can speak the language.
If the issue was Milan and not the quality of Retegui why Juventus or Inter didn’t sign him? Inter were trying to sign Lukaku, Balogun, Morata, Scamacca, all way more expensive than Retegui. Juventus signed Milik and trying to replace Vlahovic with Lukaku. Why did they not try to sign him?
Roma still needs a striker.
Atalanta spent over 30 mil for El Bilal Toure instead of buying the great “Italian” hope Retegui.
The newcomers in serie A Genoa signed him. That’s his level.
People have never heard of Retegui until Mancini called him up for the NT because the rest of the Italian strikers are not good enough and Retegui accepted his offer to play for the Italian NT because he knows he is not good enough to play for Argentina.
Cancellieri is so good he played only 230 minutes for Lazio last season, only 90 more minutes than Romero. One of them is 21, “great Italian talent”, the other is 18.
Pinamonti is as good as Colombo, and that not good enough.
Parisi went to a team that promised him that he can at least challenge to start. He wasn’t coming to Milan to play once a month.
Even Juventus is not signing Italian players. In bunch of games lat season they didn’t have a single Italian in their starting line up.
Juventus and Inter need to sell before they can buy. Juve are already in a hole because they blew €60 million to make the loan deals for Locatelli and Kean permanent. We discarded Locatelli when he was 20, and brought in the likes of Paqueta, Castillejo and Bakayoko in midfield that season. How did that work out? They all tanked, and no, Paqueta hasn’t gone on to become a star. He’s still inconsistent.
Given Juve are Inter are/were chasing fatty Lukaku, I’m not sure they’re a good example to use. Juve blowing millions on Ronaldo is a large part of the reason they’re in such a mess today.
Roma are broke. Atalanta have just signed Scamacca.
Mancini called up Retegui because Italy isn’t producing good strikers. At €10 million, given he’s already played and scored for the national team, he’s a safer bet than someone like El Bilal Toure, whose scoring record is horrific, although he is young.
That players like Cancellieri aren’t given a chance and Italian clubs would rather sign some no name foreigner isn’t a good argument. Italy have just won the U21 World Cup and reaching the final of the U21 Euros. We also made the semi-finals of the UEFA Youth League, with several Italians in the starting 11.
Pinamonti scored 13 goals for Empoli 2 seasons ago. He is miles better than Colombo. Yes, he was poor last season, but he has a good record at youth level. It’s obvious why Sassuolo are taking a chance.
“Even Juventus is not signing Italian players. In bunch of games lat season they didn’t have a single Italian in their starting line up.”
And by the time they picked up form in the second half of the season, Cambiaso, Fagioli, Rovella and Miretti had become first team regulars. In their last game of the season, they lined-up with 5 Italians.
What Italian CB is even available?
Gabbia…..
The great thing about not selling players is you don’t have to replace them.
Gabbia didn’t want to stay at Milan. You putz. And he’s just average. He wanted playing time. You can’t force a player to stay because you have some fantastical delusions that he’s the next Nesta (he’s not).
He didn’t want to stay because it was pretty obvious he wasn’t welcome
And he didn’t need to be the next Nesta. He was the perfect squad player. He could’ve solved the 4th choice CB position for the next 15 years, and we could’ve focused on the 1st choice.
All we needed to show him was the tiniest amount of respect. But we just have to keep fiddling with this squad.
it is quite comical to see everytime there’s a solid amount of people that believe we just hate italians
It’s not about hating Italians, it’s just this never ending need to constantly shift players around the place that is not conducive to developing youth players the majority of whom tend to be Italian.
I do agree about the primavera issue but that’s not an Italy player issue only I mean imagine letting go of a huge LB talent like Kerkez for 1M