AC Milan were expected to announce the renewal of Rafael Leao after reports of positive talks, but as of yet nothing official has arrived.
La Repubblica (via MilanNews) report how the renewal of Leao seemed to be all done and dusted and instead the long-awaited signing is slow in coming. The paper speculates that the reason is not the dispute with Sporting CP, but rather it seems that the €4m net per season salary put on the plate by the Rossoneri is no longer enough.
Because of this development, is not excluded that in the coming weeks some clubs will try their hand to poach Leao from the Diavolo, but a very high asking price has already been set given the immense potential of the Portugal international.
The report continues by adding that Paolo Maldini wants €90m if Milan are to let go of the former Lille man, given how difficult a task it would be to replace him.
he should get 50% of that, because 50% of the time he is daydreaming on the pitch.
Daydreaming. Or just watching the others play. Not playing though – that’s for sure.
Three weeks ago I would have said “pay the man”, now my answer would be “call PSG and take any offer above 70 millions”.
If the board can get a large offer, then sell and reinvest – would look fantastic on the books for meeting FFP requirements and his value will be at its peak at the moment. Please say the lessons of the Hakan, Donnarumma and Kessie have been learned and don’t be held hostage by Mendes changing his mind!
Sell him if any offer coming in the end of the season, im personally not really a fans of him. too lazy for my taste.
Sell him immediately, he has talent not a world class,very lazy and inconsistent, overhyped. Get rid of this guy and go for guys that are hungry.
Better than nothing. They gotta learn how it’s gonna work especially for cash oriented players. Sell and buy 2 hyped striker and AMF again. Learn the training program from UCL teams.
I think he’s quite easily replaceable.
Hard to disagree with the guys above. The only reasonable thing is to sell. This is turning into yet another Dollarumma/Cashie case and that is affecting everyone and everything.
Sell while they still can. 90M€ is a faaaaar fetched dream but I guess they can try. I think he will leave for 40-50M€ though. And even that is more than he’s currently worth.
PSG already offered us 70m for him about a month ago brother
did you ever play socer by yourselfe? The teams are covering Leao with 3 players because of zero impact on RW or Number 10 and you would sell him? There are just 2x players in staff Leao and Theo which are able to play UCL in spring. Tonali ist not!!
It is not his offensive ability that they are questioning but rather his effort when he is not on the ball. Few here would argue that he is our best dribbler and likely most unpredictable player. Trouble is, he is inconsistent (stats prove this) and ineffective when he does not have the ball. I personally would sell for anything over 50 million given that Lille get a percentage of resale as I don’t think Leao is a great fit for this system for the reasons stated above.
Perhaps Pioli actually instructs him not to put in that much work off the ball and to stay high so it forces the opposition full back to make a choice of helping with the attack or covering. It also means that he will always be in a position to receive the ball where he can do his best work and hurt the opposition.
Maybe that’s why his play has dropped. Perhaps he feel as though he should be getting more $ rather than work towards it..
I.soet of Thad this weird feeling that the contract talks stall because of demands
L.ol… funny how I pointed this out after the Torino game, when some people talked about how far we have come, and the team being a growing group.
What are we growing, if the management keeps making each season about experiments with fringe players and outcasts from other clubs, without injecting quality into the club.??
Leao’s is not suffering from a dip in form, it’s pure psychological. He has received offers and he is probably conflicted, considering the expectations the club and the fans have of him with renewal been put forward.
The management has not made any ambitious statements in their dealings. If your ambition is Top 4 every season, a player would rather earn the highest he can while playing, whether in his current club or elsewhere.
With the management’s plan of balancing the books as priority, any player who has his mind set on winning Titles would not want to play for Milan, except the club is willing to make it worth the player’s while.
Leao for some time in the season was the backbone of our attack, and he put in quite the shift without support from his peers. If you guy remember, El Sharawy did the same for one season, and he broke down and went into a lengthy injury spell, Bonaventura did the same at a time too and went into injury and they were never the same after that, same thing even happened with Pato.
The management should quit f**king around and invest in the club to win, or sit back and make profit for themselves grooming players.
At this point every player must evaluate what he wants from the future.
Keo I think you’re a little man lol. If you truly knew what has transpired over the last decade you would not be talking like this. The reason the owners and management are focused on balancing the books is because the disaster cause by the previous ownership and management. Paolo Maldini was part of this historic team for 2 decades and knows what needs to be done. We are finally financially stable and Elliott group are showing a willingness to invest now that the books are balanced are we are now back in the good graces with UEFA. You guys need to honestly chill out and let these guys continue building with patience and the right investments we will be back on top of Europe in the near future!!!
So sorry to hurt your feelings Big man, because next season is going to be another round of experiments with more fringe players. Elliot is NOT going to invest in quality. I understand the where you are coming from, but growth can only take us so far without the right depth, which has been lacking for two seasons now. What good is steady growth if the talent pool is depleted with every passing season without any success in our title pursuits.
I want to believe the management is doing everything right, so far Elliot has done well in managing the accounts, but I am not confident of the commitments in doling out enough cash to secure the quality needed.
The truth must be said, in the grand scheme of “Growth”, M & M have been horrible in their recent transfer choices, regardless of how much was available to them.
Dude , you forgot elliot just vulture funds not billionaire like roman Abramovich,Nasser Al khelafi or syeikh( owner manc city) . Elliot want to reduce debt as low as they can so they can sell club’ easily, see inter? Zhang are hard to find buyer due to high debt reached 1B euro. It is different with roman Abramovich that all out to buy star player,sign expensive coach for Chelsea,elliot purpose just to balance the book and reduce all debt. If you are not satisfied with cheap and young squad AC Milan then better move on and support another rich club’, it is better for your heart too so you can happy see star player in your team
I don’t think we can get 90 m euro from selling leao. He is not worth that price , we are lucky if we can sell him in summer 50-60m euro. He don’t want to sign new contract because PSG offer him 6m euro nett salary,this is just repeat Donnarumma Case. If he still refused sign new contract until transfer market open ,just sell him to highest bid club
If there is any club silly enough to pay that, take the money and run.
Leao is a great athlete and an awful football player. His understanding of the game is at a beginners level. If fans try to actually watch him play his movement instead of being fooled by couple useless dribblings,, they’ll understand why he’ll never going to be a great player .
In his 3 years as a Milan player he has 20 goals. In 19/20 6g 1a, 20/21 6g 6a, 21/22 8g 4a. He has 2 more goals this year that the previous 2, )and that’s because he is a starter & plays more,) and people say he is a star.
Sell, use the money to get a player who wants to win not to rap
Just sell him for 60-70 , invest the money on Traore and Scamacca..our remaining budget will be enough for DC, MC and RW
hasn’t score a goal in 2 months no brainer grab the money you can do a lot with 60 mil
This is already another deja vu. Leao should be sold this window asap. Otherwise we will get nothing as usually. Players operating as free agents want to maximise their gains along with their agents. Maldini and co should learn from the past and rapidly act. It is clear he will not renew.
So basically Leao is not a good player…now I understand the increasing interest in sports such as Curling in the last few years
he remind me of Suso, only good in 1 pos, lazy & too predictable.
if he ask 4+m/y salary beside didn’t bring us any trophy he just another Gigio/Kessie type, not a champ only want to be high salary squad player.
sell to highest bider b4 is too late
Leao is a quality player who can make a difference. Problem is that the team is not balanced so opposition teams now know they can close him down and they take away the biggest threat in our team.
Stop getting your football knowledge off video games and commenting on here that you know better than our management who have got us back to fighting for the scudetto for 2 years straight with a squad you are all complaining about.
Totally agree with what you are saying. We are in the best form in nearly a decade, a few hiccups here and there are normal. We as fans should support management when we can see results are coming in, even if its not as fast as we’d like
It’s funny the people on here screaming to sell Leao and calling him lazy. Those are the same people who complain we give up on players too soon and wish we didn’t sell them early. Now if true, 90M would be hard to turn down for ANY player and management would have to consider it. It’s business. But for those who are saying he’s lazy and isn’t a good and that is the reason to sell and give up on this player – clearly have not watched many games or don’t understand the way the game is played. For the first time in many years we have a dynamic player capable of breaking the lines and creating. And now everyone wants to sell? Look at Tonali. Some were saying he wasn’t worth it after last season – and this season he is a beast. Some players take more time to develop than others – especially forwards. Leao is 22 – not 26. Give him another season. If he hasn’t improved and become a consistent scorer then we can consider a sale. I would hate to give up on Leao at this stage in his development and see him next season at a team like Liverpool scoring goals in mass. Now if his agent says like Kessie or Donnaruma that he wants 8-10M a season – well than that is another story – and we may have no choice but to sell. But right now so far as we know that hasn’t happened. Patience is needed IMO.
Leao need to grow up, he is no Pato or even Sharawi level when they started with Milan. He needs to achieve more then ask whatever salary he wants.
Anh ấy… được giá là bán.
To all those who are doubting Leao for having a drop in form.. Here is a little fun fact.
1. Without Leao, we wouldn’t be fighting for Scudetto.
2. We don’t have a SINGLE attacker who has the quality to produce ANYTHING in the attack except Leao. Maybe Rebic is somewhat effective on his best days but that’s about it.
3. Leao has been carrying the whole team on his shoulders and is a big game player.
4. He is literally unstoppable in the wings for defenders. Left or right doesn’t matter.
He is worth more than 90M. Any good scout will know that. We won’t be able to replace Leao in at least in the next 5 years for sure unless a generational talent gets scouted by our scouting team somewhere in the world for LW. All we need is a good playmaker who can enable Leao and a productive RW to take the pressure off of Leao and allow him to play his natural game.
All good and fast dribblers/wingers need to conserve energy to do what they are good at which may look like laziness. But that’s needed for the player to keep the energy to burst out with their runs to beat their opponent. Anyone who ever played football and tried to outrun their opponents while dribbling knows just how energy consuming it can be.
To be fair, the team we currently have.. EVERY player in attack is useless at the moment without proper playmaker. The only one making plays in the whole Milan team was Theo but his form has dipped at the end of the season which is natural for ANY player in ANY game. So every other team has figured out that if they shut Leao down with 3/4 defenders, MIlan literally has ZERO threat in attack since no one is capable to creating a single CHANCE except leao and theo. THAT is the whole problem in our team.
As for Milan not winning scudetto, I am not every worried about it. We had a chance, yes, but it was a miracle performed by the whole team+manager+management when this team was not ready to even compete. It was all thanks to the defense Maldini built for Milan that’s better than the whole world and keeping us in the chase for scudetto.
All of our fans are blaming this guy, that guy, management, pioli but no one is acknowledging that our team, manager and management pulled a miracle out of nothing. It’s called ungratefulness.
The thing is.. it all boils down to bad luck. if we didn’t have 6 of our main starters unavailable for two months this season, I am sure by now.. we would’ve had Scudetto in Milan’s cabinet.
So all I am going to ask our fans is, stop blaming, be thankful and support the team without criticizing. I know it can be frustrating at times.. but This team isn’t supposed to be here but here we are, in race for Scudetto and still with a big chance of winning it.
Personally, I would prefer keeping Leao while strengthening the team around him to allow Leao to play his natural game. We will be unstoppable next season. And yes, Leao deserves more than 4Mil. Our management needs to understand, we cannot always be cheap with world class players. If we can’t come to an agreement with Leao by the time Summer window opens, we need to sell him immediately this summer.
Forza milan.
What is going to happen, if for example, nobody wants him and he does not want to sign new contract. In 1-2 years, he will left as a free. All Milan investment in him, will be worthless. UEFA must do something about this issue!