AC Milan will soon say goodbye to Malick Thiaw and hello to Koni De Winter, which will have an impact on the budget.
What kind of financial impact do such deals have? As MilanNews report, Thiaw was acquired in the summer of 2022 and signed a contract until June 2027. His historical cost is €9.29m and a residual amount of approximately €3.71m.
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Since the fixed portion will be €38m, the capital gain received by Milan amounts to approximately €34.3m, from which the 10% due to Schalke 04 will then have to be deducted.
De Winter to arrive
Massimiliano Allegri will soon have a replacement, though. Milan and Genoa have now finalised the deal for De Winter: the defender will wear the Rossoneri for €20m and sign a five-year contract worth €1.7m net.
Taking these figures as true, then the Belgian’s amortisation will be €4m and his gross salary will be around €3.1m, for a total annual cost of €7.1m. Thiaw, between amortisation and gross salary, cost €2.9m.
So it’s true that after selling for around €40m, Milan are buying for €20m, as Carlo Pellegati. Yet, the price tag isn’t the only thing to consider when delving into these discussions. Due to organisational needs and ownership regulations, Milan is a creature that must stand on its own two feet.
Since this season Milan – after last season’s disastrous eighth-place finish – won’t be participating in European competitions and drastically increasing the cost of the squad would have been sporting suicide, Casa Milan has chosen to cover the ‘hole’ with extemporaneous capital gains for now.
In the Thiaw-De Winter ‘exchange’ Milan obtains liquidity, a useful capital gain for this year without Champions League football, makes the most of a player with less than two years left on his contract, and gets its hands on a Serie A talent.
“In the Thiaw-De Winter ‘exchange’ Milan obtains liquidity, a useful capital gain for this year without Champions League football, makes the most of a player with less than two years left on his contract, and gets its hands on a Serie A talent.”
For those with the density of a slab of concrete.
The management isn´t as bad as most people think it is. We´re financially healthy (not yet wealthy), sign all the players we want (Jashari, Ricci, Gimenez, last year Fofana, …) and we´re not losing money on outgoing players (most of the time). Transfers involve a lot more than transfer fees, wages or even amortisation. There´s also signing fees, manager costs, taxes, payment terms,… and above all personal relations (which are almost never known to the outside world). We start the season with a good squad and a good coach but in the end it´s up to the players. Last years squad was definitely capable of reaching top 4 but they didn´t put in the effort. Without motivation, you get nowhere. Let´s hope they do better this year.
For me the most important thing now is that we get the players on time. Getting the players that you want on the 31 of August is not ideal.
We got Ibrahimovic on the last day of the mercato the first time. For good players this shouldn´t be an issue. It possibly affects the first month, but beyond that there´s something wrong if it doesn´t work out. You can´t expect that all the homework is done in the first weeks of the mercato. Other teams like to evaluate their options as well and when time pressure comes in, a lot changes. For both sellers and buyers. It´s a matter of handling it the right way. And so far, this management has done pretty well.
Ibrahimovic? Worst example I have ever seen. Comparing Ibrahimovic mentality and experience with De Winter or Hojlund.
Ok then take that managment at your home.
They worst managment at world,maybe Manchester have worst only.
This managment need to break the ICE and start winning the league back2back and get back2back in champions quarter finals and that will be the jump we need.
This is a fair objective that I even think the owners want to attain, but I think they thought it will be easier to get a modern stadium through the door.
a new stadium would 2-5x their revenue but they cannot get it done. the Italian bureaucracy and corruption is holding teams back severely from making a living to help the club.
But certainly back to back qualification and consecutive deep runs in the UCL will help. But the owners need to aim to win or else it will not seem like to the players that the club wants to win.
Thank you for looking at the actual numbers that matter. De Winter will be paid nearly 3x Thiaw’s salary when you look at the gross figures (what it costs Milan) and we get about 32M for the sale.
Also worth pointing out that each transfer comes with additional fees on top, so that 20M figure doesn’t include any signing bonus or agent/legal fees incur too.
Signing bonus is paid when the player arrives for free. Commissions, in a paid transfer, are pretty symbolic usually – of course you can find the random agent like Zirkzee’s one who wants a huge commission but it is not the usual way…
Sorry R but why we need think about salary at Milan club? I need great club with great players and dont care how much owners will spend. If they cant bring great players for this club,then step off and let others who can.
So i realy dont care if salary 12m or 1m dont care just want great owners who have vision and bring great players. They can take Empoli if Milan to expencive for them
Pellegati’s point isn’t the literal figures. The point is that if the market is working, and it mostly does, then when you replace a player at 1/2 the cost of the one you sold the likelihood is that the new player isnt as good as the outgoing player. So, unless we get lucky a transaction like this we likely have gotten worse. If we continue to do that then we will continue to perform poorly, and that is the real impact on our balance sheet… as we have seen by finishing in 8th place.
The market is working? The market hasn’t been working for 15 years and it’s breaking further with the Saudi League. Is Thiaw a 40M player? If so, why? Thiaw is at most a 25M player. We replaced a 25M player with a 20M player. Thiaw is not 15M better than De Winter. That is what is called the “Premier League Tax”. That’s how you have to look at this. Newcastle overpaid for Thiaw, we paid the right price for De Winter.
For your point above and this one: The individual transaction in itself isn’t a bad one. Thiaw for 40m looks good now, yes ofc. So there’s two ways that can go, either he flops and we look good from strictly a financial view or he fulfills his potential and becomes 40m or more…but that’s neither here nor there.
Similarly we don’t know what we’re going to get with De Winter. He could.flop.or.do.well. my problem is we’re resetting almost the entire squad (once more) when I question the need to do so. Centre back pairings need time even moreso than any other part of the pitch. For me our best CB pairing would have been Thiaw and Gabbia going into the start of the season. We have one that’s been there for a while, our academy player who we don’t want to play yet is probably the best of the lot, and a sophomore. Now, were a week or so away from the opener and require a purchase of a new CB AND also to get him up to speed PLUS begin all over the process of playing together with his teammates and more importantly partner at the back. Many of these signings will, once more will take 2-3 years to gel and we won’t see the rewards until that far out…by which time Furlani would be eager for a sale. That’s the problem I have really.
Also, on the point that Thiaw isn’t with 40m and EPL clubs are paying the prem tax, what are we with the Belgian tax? It works the same way. And I dont see how that makes us smart…..if they’re foolish to overpay 40m for Thiaw the we’re certainly equally foolish to overpay for Jashari
i said that the market mostly works – the top players in the world are the most expensive. You can go to transfermarket and see that. just because there is a group of teams that overpay doesnt mean the market isnt working. This is actually normal for a market – for some to over pay for things and what teams pay is based on thier means – saudi and premier league have more money so they pay more. not an indicator the market is broken, just a change in dynamics.
If a market it isnt working then there is little to no relationship between what is paid and what is received across the board – most of the time the better player costs more and if a buyer has more money they pay more to get the deal done as time is more important than cost.
so pellegatis’ point still holds -this deal may end up being a real win for milan, and i hope that it does, but if we continue to buy players for less than the ones we sell the regression to the mean tells us that we will eventually have a worse team
Thiaw isnt worth 40M, Milan bought him for 9M 3 years ago and we can agree he is maybe close to a 20-30M valuation. I think it is too far fetched to think he is worth 40M.
I think they are being wise, in the market today you can find decent CB with adequate talent to play in Serie A. So this transfer is fine even though I think there were better players they could have gone for.
The leftover money can go towards completing the market with an adequate ST and RB which is again a wise decision. I do think the fans need to realise that this club, especially most Serie A club is broke. I do not reference the owners but the club as an entity does not make a profit. In other countries it does but not in Italy. So even when you hear people say that Milan has not been in the red. It is usually because they register transfer fees into the next calender year and that puts Milan in the green. It is sad but it is the situation Italian clubs are facing since 2007 I think.
Leoni seems bound for Liverpool. The only of these defenders that has that aura when you watch him for 20 minutes. I’m really curious why is Liverpool going for the “overpriced” kid and not smart signing like Milan? Their scouting has to be worst ever.
Or maybe we spoke to Leoni’s camp and they said “no thanks, we’re waiting on Liverpool” so we moved on.
What an idiot to compare Liverpool to Milan buying power, they bought 4 players for nearly 300M Euro (more than Milan, Inter and Juve combine) 40M its not a great deal for them
It warms my heart to hear Pellegati called out. Every time that guy opens his mouth something stupid comes out.
I dont know what Newcastle was thinking, considering we almost offloaded Thiaw to Como for a mere 25M. Getting an extra 15M is very much welcomed and thus, this is a good deal all around.
Getting De Winter is also a very reasonable business, and we acted swiftly there. So I suppose it’s hard not to give a 10 for this double operation.
not looking good for the new signing…
but will see the new season
De Winter and Athekame are done. Their medicals will be within 48 hours from a report I’ve read.