The AC Milan management are ready to enact an Italian-led recruitment policy to help ease some of the worries related to the squad lsits, a report claims.
According to Calciomercato.com, Milan will plan for the upcoming transfer windows with an ever more attentive eye on the players who grew up in Italian youth teams and even within the youth sector of the Rossoneri.
Analysing the current squad and the one that could be available for next season,Milan are already looking at having four empty slots when it comes to homegrown and academy graduate players, a number that could even grow at the end of the year.
In both Serie A and the Champions League, there is the requirement to have four players who came through an academy of any Italian club and four who came through the Milan youth sector, and there are certain qualifying requirements for that too (Alex Jimenez, for example, doesn’t count).
Davide Calabria and Matteo Gabbia are the only two players who came through the Milan academy, then Marco Sportiello and Alessandro Florenzi (both of whom have been absent all season) came through other clubs in Italy.
Filippo Terracciano, Lorenzo Torriani, Kevin Zeroli and Francesco Camarda are under 22 and therefore do not count, while Calabria’s situation is still up in the air given that his contract expires at the end of the season and there are no plans to renew it, at least not at the figures he is asking for.
The same situation applies to Florenzi, who – in addition to the cruciate ligament injury that is keeping him out for almost the entire season – also has a contract expiring at the end of the year that will not be renewed unless there are surprises.
This is why Milan today more than ever will be forced to look at a ‘Made in Italy’ transfer policy. The priority will have to be to acquire as many players as possible, regardless of nationality, but who have spent at least three years between the ages of 15 and 21 in the youth sectors of Italian teams.
It works the other way too: if Geoffrey Moncada and co. insist on signing players from abroad they will have to offload players in order to not worsen the situation.
Who are the candidates to join? The same source reported last night that Fabiano Parisi and Giuseppe Pezzella are targets for the deputy left-back role, while Samuele Ricci keeps being mentioned as a name for the midfield.