AC Milan CEO Giorgio Furlani has responded to a question on why the club seem to pursue signings that have a certain ceiling in terms of transfer fee.
Milan once again operated in a ‘sweet spot’ this summer in terms of the money spent per player, something that we have written at length about before and that continues on from the Elliott Management era. They aimed to push a line of sustainability with targeted investments.
It yielded the core that was in place for the Scudetto-winning campaign, with players like Mike Maignan, Fikayo Tomori (he was a bit more), Theo Hernandez, Ismael Bennacer, Tonali and Rafael Leao all falling into that same category of costing €15-25m.
This summer, it was the turn of Alvaro Morata, Strahinja Pavlovic, Emerson Royal and Youssouf Fofana to join from fees ranging between €13m (for the Spanish striker) and around €20m (for the Serbian defender).
Furlani spoke alongside Tammy Abraham at his first press conference yesterday and a journalist asked him: “What the fans often don’t understand is why your policy is to sign players for €20m as opposed to going all-in for more of a match winner, at least on paper.”
The CEO responded: “I often say that in football people focus a great deal on price as opposed to value. Price does not necessarily equate to value.
“We believe that we have signed some good players that play our brand of football and will contribute to success for Milan, so the price tag is irrelevant in many ways.”