AC Milan are looking at potential options for the midfield department and they have picked out four players from Portugal, according to a report.
This morning’s edition of La Gazzetta dello Sport (via MilanLive) reports that chief scout Geoffrey Moncada is following some Primeira Liga players with interest, possibly with an eye to finding Franck Kessie’s replacement in the event he leaves on a free transfer.
The first player mentioned is 26-year-old Sporting CP anchorman Joao Palhinha, who is valued at €50m currently and this price tag makes him out of reach for the time being. Then there is the 20-year-old Tomas Handel from Vitoria Guimaraes who has broken into the Portuguese U21 national team. He has a lot of potential and his market value is still low, so this may work in his favour.
The 21-year-old Vitinha of Porto and 19-year-old Paulo Bernardo of Benfica B are in the viewfinder as well but rather than being just defensive midfielders, the duo can also play a bit further forward as the attacking midfielder too if needed.
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I hate this narrative of if Kessie leaves for free, if you ain’t willing to ship him his load tuck of cash, cut your losses sell him come January and let’s end this soap opera for once, it’s been a real headache these past week. We should move forward come January.
Kessie won’t leave in January. He has go agree to a deal too and he and his agent will get a better deal as a free agent.
As a reminder, he is free to sign a pre-agreement with another club in January so he chooses his destination. This means Milan can only really sell to a club of Kessie’s choosing assuming they want him earlier than June for what will only be a nominal fee. Milan cannot just sell him as many would like because he has the control due to the expiring contract and his ability to refuse other offers and let his contract run down.
@Rosso and Honest Truth, both correct. I’ll also add that at this point it may also be worth more to keep a player of Kessie’s quality until the end of the season to help us achieve our goal (top 4, yes it still is). No replacement of equal quality and experience (and Serie A experience in particular) will be found in January. The club MUST finish top 4 to to continue on this upward trajectory. Losing Kessie in January for 5m or whatever will not help.
All the important clubs in Europe should come together and sign some kind of symbolic pact to put an end to this epidemic of out of contract players leaving for free that has been caused by greedy agents. Yes, today it might favour your team but tomorrow you’ll suffer, when the next Raiola decides to move his player somewhere else and make more money for himself. Teams must come to an agreement as to not to buy players who are being put in the market by their agents in that condition, even if it might seem tempting to snatch a very good player “for free” because in the teams who take part in that are perpetuation market conditions that are being imposed by agents, and sooner or later down the road it’s going to backfire for them when it’s their turn to lose a key player for free. Teams have to retake control of their players and the market from agents.
What you are saying is total BS. Imagine if the company you are working for teams up with other company in that industry to not hire workers who have run their contract down (which is totally legal). Instead AC Milan should renew contracts one year befre it expires and if the player is not convinced then put them on the market.
*before