There are new names and motives involved in AC Milan’s summer transfer strategy following the departures of Paolo Maldini and Frederic Massara, a report explains.
As reported by Milan News, there are four names that are going to be central to Milan’s transfer strategy going forward, and they will need to get to work fast.
CEO Giorgio Furlani is going to have the final say on what happens over the next few months and beyond, but chief scout Geoffrey Moncada will be identifying players for Milan to sign, whilst the data analysis will be done by Hendrik Almstadt.
It was Moncada who recently met the agent of Villarreal winger Samuel Chukwueze.
With data set to play even more of a role in Milan’s transfer strategy now, there will be a lot of focus on the work of Luke Bornn’s Zelus Analytics, as well as the consultancy work of Billy Beane on the ‘moneyball’ approach that is going to be implemented.
Sounds good to me but have we identified who will be negotiating the contracts? I remember Ollie raising it as an issue on the podcast.
@dejan10. Furlani will negotiate the contracts. He was instrumental in getting Leao renewal and settling the dispute with Lille and Sporting Lisbon.
I believe in this new partnership at Milan and I do believe it will bare more fruit than Maldini and Massara who seem to get too many signings wrong.
Furlani? More money…??? Prreeeetttt….
Something that I still don’t understand is the people that already endorse the front staff while they did nothing yet. Except a lot of talking. like a politician running a campaign.
If the strategy is to find young players in order to develop them into starters, and at best world class players, wasn’t it the exact strategy under Maldini and Massara? They signed Theo, Tomori, Leao, Tonali, Thiaw, Bennacer, Kalulu, Maignan (not so young though). That’s almost a full starting XI. And since Maldini and Massara knew football better than Wall Street bankers, they also hired veterans, such as Zlatan, Giroud and Kjaer. How did it turn? An impressive turnaround for the club, one scudetto, UCL semi-finals, relevant again after all those years.
So after one week debating on this website I understand that we all don’t feel the same way and some of us are more optimistic. But to say that we are in a better situation now, it means that we should be at least on the podium and go the UCL finals. Can’t wait!
Finding young players and turning them into starters was Elliot’s strategy that Maldini and Massara were instructed to follow. That wasn’t an M&M strategy. One of the reasons why Leonardo left.
That’s why Gazidis wanted to hire Ragnick but after Pioli and the players great run after the covid break they decided to abandon that idea and stick with M&M but they had them follow Ragnicks ideas of buying talents and turn them into champions.
Moncada was hired by Gazidis and Elliot, not by Leonardo and Maldini.
Players like Theo and Leao were followed by Moncada way before him and Maldini got hired at Milan.
There is a 2020 interview of Moncada when he is talking about both Theo and Leao and him following them while they were playing for Sporting and Atletico Madrid youth teams and how they were signed.
Yeah I understand that too, and I have great respect for Moncada’s work, I’m delighted he’s still with us. But it means that Maldini and Massara were able to follow the strategy.
@Poli: Bartholomeus didn’t claim the young player strategy was formulated by M&M, what he meant is the young player strategy was already in use during M&M era.
It’s funny how Moncada gets all the praise for signing such as Theo and Leao but none of the blame for CDK, Adli, Aster etc…wasn’t he the same scout??? Guys like that donkey @Pioli conveniently cherry pick facts to suit their argument while conveniently ignoring others. I also guess Theo, Leao and Mikes own words how Maldini convinced them to sign with Milan must have been lies LOL. Ya sure I’m sure that’s it lol. What I do know is none of this matters when your club has no money. “Money ball” didn’t work out for the Oakland A’s lol
Are you sure? Furlani wasn’t preset during meeting with Chukwueze’s agent.
Young player strategy was used by M&M unwilling and the more success the squad was having the more unwilling Maldini was to follow that strategy, especially in the last summer Mercato.
Actually there is two different ways to see this.
1. Maldini and Massara failed. Alright. Origi was the “super sub” for Liverpool, I hoped he would be the same for us but no he was lame af. We have to remind that recruiting is also a gamble and you can’t be right every time. Every club makes mistakes.
2. Pioli didn’t achieve to involve the young players. He didn’t even play them for the last game of the season with absolutely nothing to win or lose. Vranckx and Adli were barely used, despite showing promises when they played. Thiaw didn’t play before Pioli was forced to play him and we know what happened. De Ketelaere was a liability, but he’s also very young and we all know the context of his arrival, during the last days of the mercato with no preparation with the team. I remember that I was so frustrated by Leao during his first seasons that I hated him, and I always benched him when I played FIFA with friends. The price tag for Charles was hefty, but it’s the price tag for young promising prospects today. And once again it’s a gamble. Maybe next year he will thrive.
Thus my conclusion from all this mess is that Jerry was not on par with Maldini and Massara’s ambitions to win right now. Being 4th in Serie A was not their goal. It’s Jerry’s. So I really struggle to be thankful to this guy or to be optimistic. It’s like we will have to hibernate for some years before the team can be competitive again.
Yes, M&M wasn’t 100% commited to young players (Elliot allow him to sign experienced players to some extent). It seems it lead to disagreement with RedBird though.
And it lead to the questions:
Who want Dybala? Maldini, Furlani, or Cardinale?
Who reject Dybala? Maldini, Furlani, or Cardinale?
Why does it seems like Maldini and Furlani agreed on Dybala but Cardinale reject it? Maldini and Furlani was fine about signing Origi (similar age and salary to Dybala) so they should be fine about signing Dybala. The only different thing is that Origi’s signature had arrived before RedBird while Dybala’s had not.
More BS from @Piloi the Redbird lover! LOL. M&M were fired because they asked the club to spend more $$ to WIN. They also knew buying ONLY young talent doesn’t win you titles you need a mix of young and old. Maldini as a former player knew that. BUT that was not the agenda of Redbird. They are not interested in winning titles. They are interested in winning only so much as it helps the brand grow. They said it themselves yesterday. “ we want to “participate” in UCL every year to grow the brand” – that is not the same as WINNING TITLES. Maldini knowing the history of the club and its fans felt obligated to put forth a team capable of winning TITLES and in order to do that – you need experience. Where would we have been without Ibra Giroud and Kajer in our Scudetto year? But again, that is NOT Redbird policy. Policy is to buy young assets fit them under a wage cap and hope they develop into stars then sell for PROFIT. And then repeat the cycle again and again – just like Atalanta. Profitable club but they win nothing and never will because the owner doesn’t care to win – just make profit – it’s just a business. So now we are just a business as well – no longer a club like Madrid concerned about its history and fans. Now we are another business in the Redbird family that has to turn a profit. That is a FACT. And that my friends is our new reality and that will not change no matter who the sporting director, coach, CEO, head scout or analytic money ball guru is.
Okay cheers and I agree. I thought he said something about they’ve never done the actual nuts and bolts of it before so was concerned but I was doing 10 things at once so could’ve misheard.
The “moneyball” means selling best players at their prime and buying young cheap talents. It works only for owners who want to get money,the club will stay always at the same level. They should buy some small club for that,not a giant as Milan.
hope will works..
just wondering if in the past they use this method,
Inzaghi (physical & skill unconvincing) Gattuso (terrible RW) Pirlo (flop striker) Seedorf (flop DM), Rijkaard (slow CB) will come to Milan?
The software will crash if they input Super Pippo’s data.
Moneyball approach can not be directly applied to football! Stop distributing this BS. Moneyball works for Baseball. It is a non contact sport where players statistics are “clean”. Meaning it could be quite easily measured as there is almost no direct intervention by force of the opposite team. Football is a much, much more complicated game of “direct contact”. This is what happened to CDK. His stats were great… in Belgium league, where the opposition is much different. His was producing these stats in completely different environment. In Baseball that would not matter as the pitch is the pitch and the ball is the ball. Not in football. And since you have to apply so many more of different parameters it is simply impossible to make sound statistical prediction. You can try but it is way way more hard than in Baseball.
You’re not the MilanFan that’s here normally… not sure why you’re posting under that name.
And its not money ball approach. It’s data driven analytics. Finding diamonds in the rough and developing them into stars, like Theo, Leao.
Case in point, Luca Romero from Lazo – great talent. Needs to develop. Young and promising.
Not sure what do you mean that was always my nick “MilanFan” if there is another person he must have different nick like “Milan Fan” or something. Anyways they dont care about unique names here.
As for the moneyball — did you actually read the article. You don’t need to explain me what data driven analytics are. Try explaining it to whoever wrote the article.
Scouting is easier nowadays given that so called data driven analytics stuff. But after you analyze the data, you get the list of good promising player, and after that you deal with human being. Milenials, most of them on their mind is money, get rich, be famous and stuff. Obviously you can’t be “rich” with salary cap hence no one wants to join your club while other club from prem even mid table club could offer more significant amount of money.
I’m not saying that Moncada is bad scout. He is brilliant, but convincing young player is never easy because they have option to go somewhere else with better payment. That is where M&M excel by selling high the history of Milan and Maldini himself is a living legend. This football is not like years ago where players start banging the door when they get low playing time. You see most of the club having hard time to get rid of their benchwarmer who doesn’t want to leave the club because of easy money.
I mean getting 4m a year is kinda rich in my mind to he honest…
Man, me too. 4 milion euro, I will need my entire productive age to reach that number. But again, if you are worker and you have opportunity to gain more numbers with same work, which one you choose?
I agree man. They say Billy Beane will be a consultant. WTF this guy is a former baseball player and a former baseball executive. What does football have in common with baseball? I can’t feel confident when we are told this kind of sht. It’s all PR strategy, throwing big names. Or maybe he will just be around doing nothing like fat fck Scaroni. This is some money that could be saved for sure.
Maybe software consultant about different parameters from the ANALytics 😂
100 percent agreed with you.