AC Milan’s strategy when it comes to the transfer market has often been to invest in young talent that is perhaps veering on the unknown, and then wait to reap the rewards.
As this morning’s edition of La Gazzetta dello Sport (seen below) reports, Malick Thiaw has become the ‘symbolic operation’ for RedBird Capital’s Milan and the philosophy that they want to embrace.
Gerry Cardinale fired Paolo Maldini as technical director within 48 hours after the final game of last season and put the summer mercato in the hands of CEO Giorgio Furlani and chief scout Geoffrey Moncada for various reasons, but their vision is one of them.
Maldini and Ricky Massara were actually hoping to sign three more experienced Serie A performers in Marko Arnautovic (who went to Inter) for the striker role, Domenico Berardi for the right wing (who remained at Sassuolo) and Sergej Milinkovic-Savic for the midfield (who went to Saudi Arabia).
This is not in line with RedBird’s strategy, who instead prefer operations like the Thiaw one. He was identified by Moncada and his scouting group, signed by Maldini and Massara, then finally launched by Pioli after months of testing.
Milan paid €8.5m to sign him from Schalke 04 and now he is worth €25m as per the paper, and he promises to grow further. He has become an established starter this year for Pioli and will be a point of certainty in the derby, not bad for someone who in 2022 was the last option among the central defenders.
Launched by Pioli after months of testing 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
He only got chance due to the problems we had in jan 2022
Haha I thought the same. So much fallacious rhetoric from the press recently, it’s like the club writes its own articles and la Gazza publishes it then.
Funny to see that Redbird’s ‘symbolic operation’ is the one which include a phone call from Maldini (instead of Pioli) to convince the player. Reijnders fit ‘symbolic operation’ better.
Lol it’s was more Pioli was forced to play Thiaw than launching Thiaw lol. Most of our CBs has injuries and he had no choice but to play him. And when he did, At that point he couldn’t deny those goal saving clearances he made after coming late into a game totally cold.
How is it a symbolic thing when the same article actually mentioned that he was our LAST option (after missing out on Botman)?
Had Pioli didn’t encounter leaky defence and was forced to tinker and include him in some matches, I believe he would be labelled as another Maldini’s failure/panic buys instead.
“Maldini and Ricky Massara were actually hoping to sign three more experienced Serie A performers in Marko Arnautovic (who went to Inter) for the striker role, Domenico Berardi for the right wing (who remained at Sassuolo) and Sergej Milinkovic-Savic for the midfield (who went to Saudi Arabia).”
Yes and don’t forget they also were looking at Loftus-Cheek and Pulisic who are currently signed and playing as starters, though RLC would have been signed as a depth super sub to SMS 😁🤗 . Not to mention Chuk was linked during M&Ms time. So I suppose that leaves Romero as this year’s Thiaw 🤷♂️
If Maldini was still around I’d have rated these 3 transfers as Milinkovic-Savic 9/10 Arnautovic 6/10 Berardi 3/10. Overall the new strategy’s infinitely better as we got younger and better players for a fraction of the price. Maybe only Savic compares to who we have in midfield but would’ve been way more expensive.
Hopefully our midfielders can compare favourably with Milinkovic-Savic at the end of the season, but for now he’s way better.
I would say Arnautovic 4 or 5/10 depending of the price, Milinkovic-Savic 10/10 and Berardi 7/10 but I like him. Pulisic is doing good so far so that’s fine.
With budget 35m euro without selling ? Sign arnautovic,berardi,SMS? Dont forget Rlc are their target too. From where they get money to sign all their target without selling tonali ? SMS 40m euro already over their budget
He wanted initial 70m budget and didn’t want to sell Tonali hence why he was fired.
Even if RedBird granted his wish 70m euro budget ,that still not enough without selling. 4231 with brahim leave that they plan kamada & CDK as AMF , double pivot SMS 40m euro & tonali.Arnautovic 10m euro , RLC 16m euro , okafor 14m euro ( must buy this LW because rebic clash with pioli and rebic must out) , berardi 20m euro