In recent months, AC Milan have been trying to secure a deal with Monaco for their midfielder Youssouf Fofana, and today, Thiago Scuro, Monaco’s Director of Football, has commented on the current situation.
The mercato has been slow this summer, likely due to the European Championship and Copa America, but there remains time for deals to be completed, and this is only a good thing for Milan as they attempt to finalise a deal for Fofana.
Before and during the headline European tournament, reports had suggested that the midfielder would arrive after France’s run ended, and whilst this was true, many expected it to be a done deal by now.
However, we are now a month and five days on from France’s elimination from the competition, and there has not been much progress with a move next summer being a possibility. Given Paulo Fonseca has stated the midfielder is the club’s top target, this is a frustrating matter.
Potentially, it can be argued that the Rossoneri are playing the deal in a correct manner, after all, there is no point spending what Monaco are asking for a player who will be free to move in February, but for a top target, should there be more leeway?
Scuro commented on the Fofana situation, and his words have been relayed by Milan News.
“If he has no intention of staying, it makes no sense for him to be part of the preparation [Fofana has been training separately from the rest of the squad and is ‘forcing’ a move]. It is about getting the right deal, the process is not as easy as hoped. Let’s continue, always with a respectful approach.”
I really hope we never do any kind of business with Monacco after Fofana.
Or you know, not starting with 12M€ when the starting price is 25M€ because the player is on his last year.
Great idea – do you want to donate the extra 13M then since money is no object for you?
Teams have a set budget and a value that they will pay for an asset – they will then offer less than that value, and hope to ‘meet in the middle’ which will be the number they wanted. It’s negotiation 101, shouldn’t be that difficult to understand. If the selling team refuses to budge, then you move on – you don’t just wilt and pay up because you’re desperate. That’s banter era mentality.
If you don’t want to spend 25M€ on a player, here’s an idea: don’t go for a 25M€ valued player in the first place and then complain about the other team !!
We could have gotten Hojbjerg for less than 20M€ but we were so fixated on Fofana who might not even come.
It’s one thing to start with 17-18M€, but 12M€ is plain disrespect, period.
” If the selling team refuses to budge, then you move on”
And where is our biding for other DMs ? So far we only contacted Fofana and serie A starts this week. For a team who has been lacking a DM for years, we don’t seem in a hurry to fix that.
Its exactly like Prince said – this is negotiating 101. If Monaco had accepted 15 million after we offered 12 and we got him essential 10 million cheaper than what Monaco was valuing – everyone would have said oh thats a genius move from Milan! Sometimes no pleasing people.
You nailed it. The management have looked foolish in this long Fofana saga . They have done well in other transfers but I’m surprised Fofana hasn’t lost patience with the club.
The problem here is that you read news stories, which are placed to create a narrative, and blindly believe them to be true. Do you honestly believe that Milan have not held discussions with any players other than Fofana? There are so many moving pieces in a world-wide economy like this, that it is ridiculously naive to think that you can just fixate on one player like that.
Also, I don’t think Milan went for a 25M valued player (and wtf does that even mean – everyone can value the player a different number, there is no objective number associated with a player) and then complained about the other team. You’ll find that they went for a player they valued at probably ~20M, and then you complained about them.
@Prince P:
You can look up Fofana’s value. Many sources value him as high as 30M€.
As for others DMs, the only names we’ve been linked to are Fofana, Danilo, Cardoso and Koné, 2 of whom aren’t even DMs and all of them costing north of 20M€.
So if we can’t pay 25M€ for Fofana, how are we gonna get Cardoso, Danilo or god forbid, Koné ?
But you’re missing the point. Here is a similar example:
Mbappe’s value is €180M. Last year, Madrid could definitely have paid this up and signed him. But they didn’t, because that value did not account for his contract situation. In the same way, Milan have no intention of paying Fofana’s ‘market’ value of €30M – and nor should they. It doesn’t account for his contract situation. Why should Milan be bullied by Monaco when we have the upper hand? Fofana is clearly holding out for us, or he would be in the Prem by now. We are not a small club, and will not be bullied.
As for the others – we may well be willing to pay €25M for one of them, because it’s a different situation – perhaps their contracts do not impact their true values and therefore Milan agree that they are ‘worth’ €25M.
I would rather pay up for a valuation I agree with, than pay the same for a player who should be cheaper – we are a big club, like Madrid, and do not need to be bullied. Plus if we give in now, this will happen every time we want to sign players in the future.
And have you considered this: we sign one of those others for €25M and get Fofana for free next year? Getting two players for €25M – is that not an enticing option? Rome was not built in a day, and Fofana (while I like the player) is not going to transform our team.
@Prince P
Sorry but your example misses a lot of things.
First there’s a world of differences between 180M€ and 25M€ even for Real Madrid. We won’t breach FFP regulations if we pay 25M€. Real Madrid never negociated with PSG, they always wanted to get Mbappé for free. At some point they offered to get him for 50M€ because he wanted to leave but that was during the winter and it didn’t drag on.
Also Real Madrid always had attacking options, they won 2UCLs and 1 La Liga without Mbappé. As for us, we don’t have a single defensive midfielder, the last one we had was Kessie. And for a position that is clearly urgent, we’re surely taking our time.
Also you’re talking about giving in, have you forgotten for how much we got Chukwueze despite him also being on his last year ?
I don’t even care about Fofana, I don’t even want Fofana, but so far we either being linked to players for about the same price, or players that aren’t even DMs (Koné). And it’s not like all of them are on their last year for us to be able to “bully them” or whatever.
You read my example literally – it wasn’t meant to be a like-for-like comparison, but simply shows how big clubs operate. The point is, you don’t offer asking price, or a player’s full valuation, when they have 1 year left on their contract. Since you being up Chuk, let’s consider what happened – Villarreal asked for €35, Milan offered way less, and eventually got him for €20.
You then say something about how Madrid didn’t need Mbappé because they had other options, that we desperately need a DM; but Fofana isn’t even a pure DM. Don’t know why any of that matters – the point is that your original post suggested you wanted Milan to offer the asking price immediately.
Since you’re the one that brought it up, look at the Chuk example and see how wrong that is.
P.s. I’m not trying to be patronising – just trying to show that fans should be patient and paying asking prices is not how negotiation works.
P.p.s. if you don’t think Fofana is good, why do you want Milan to pay more than necessary for him?
Tbh I don’t see Monaco’s fault here. They set the price for 20-25mil and apparently there are clubs that are willing to pay that (media claim Fofana rejected offers from Premier League that might have been accepted by Monaco). So Monaco’s pricing is actually valid and reasonable if someone is willing to pay.
It’s Milan that acts like a vulture because they don’t want to pay the price and they just try to exploit Monaco knowing Fofana wants to join only Milan.
It’s also not that Monaco is asking for 100mil. 25mil for French international, in perfect age (25) with good qualities is actually a good price.
Milan is a bad guy here, not Monaco.
“Milan is a bad guy here, not Monaco.”
Says a “devoted Milan-fan” on the sempremilan.com. LOL.
Bad guy? So it’s “good vs bad”-thing? LOL. Nope. Just two parties doing business. And Milan is holding the aces – not Monaco.
Depends what the ace is. I my eyes the ace is fofana and monaco is holding him. Worst case for them is he walks for free next summer
“It’s also not that Monaco is asking for 100mil. 25mil for French international, in perfect age (25) with good qualities is actually a good price. ”
Remind us again, how many player transfers have you organized? Just to make sure your word/assessment has any value. 🙂
Ronaldinho 💯 correct
So you’re glad that Donnarumma walked away for free, rather than selling him the summer before? Pretty sure PSG would’ve paid up. What about Kessie?
Think again about who is holding the aces.
Also, if the Prem is so willing to pay, and Fofana would go there, why has it not happened yet? Don’t believe everything you read – there’s obviously more to the story.
There’s no good or bad guys here. What are you, 5yo watching transformers?
It’s called a budget. You set your parameters and don’t go over it if you’re organized. Fofana is in his last year. I personally think that even 20mil is too much for him in this situation.
So if Milan set a 20mil budget for him and won’t let go, that means they are confident of landing him. Especially after Fonseca publicly calls for him.
I don’t think Monaco realize if they don’t lower there offer they won’t get any money at all, because fofana will just reject everyone
Still they have a rich owner so they might not even care about loss of 15-20mil EUR. Especially if they would keep Fofana for next year to play for them.
The only valid reason might be that they play in european cups, so they have to follow FFP rules, and getting these 15-20mil EUR for Fofana might look better in their books, as they might “unblock” that amount to spend on other players.
they got the same sanctions for breaking the rules as Milan in 2022, so they can’t mess up…but allowing a player to reach his final year of his contract is already a big mistake. He gets to pick his club, and you are stuck with their offer, so his market value gets cut in half. if you can’t make a deal with the player with 2 years left on the contract. You gotta sell asap…You just have to do it, especially with high value players. The club has learned that lesson the hard way.
And yet, we seem to be in the same slow motion train wreck with Maignan and Theo as we were with Kessie and Donnarumma, because as soon as the window shuts in September, we’ll be right in it if we haven’t renewed yet, which doesn’t seem likely. So fast forward to 2025, and Theo will have a year left, and according to some here we’ll sell him for the same 80M he’s valued at, or whatever, because…”that’s his value”, but watch not a single bid come close to that. Then, if there is even time left in the window, we’ll have to lower his price to 40, and probably accept 25-30. If not, he walks in 2026.
That or they don’t care all that much about 20M€.
Monaco is being difficult for no reason. Either they take the 20m or Fofana walks for free. If the player is serious about joining Milan then we should move for Danilo from Nottingham Forrest and get Fofana for next season.
In my opinion players like Adli, Pobega and Bennacer will be replaced either by this summer or next summer and it is a possibility RLC will be gone next summer too.
So we still need players in and players out.
And how on earth you think to get Danilo which is valued same as Fofana and who’s contract does not expiring if you cant even bring a player with expiring contract 😂 you think Nottingham will be like “ooh hello milan here take our danilo for 15 mill if you can’t get fofana,we paid him 25 mil last year but we will give you discount because we love you” 🤣
It’s all “smart” strategy from Milan, until Fofana would have enough and wouldn’t like to waste another year at Monaco and accepts offer from Premier League, as apparently there are clubs willing to pay the asking price. Clock is ticking, it’s already mid-August. If that happens, Milan will lose opportunity to grab really quality player for good price, just because they were bragging for 5mil discount for French international in top age, wanted by other top clubs…
Yet they have no issues giving Kalulu basically for peanuts to Juventus, they have no issues paying almost 20mil for very risky player as Emerson, or giving 5mil to Real for Jimenez just so they can have him back whenever they want.
IMO it’s not being smart by Milan, it’s stupid. I’d rather see Milan giving 25mil for Fofana and securing the deal and not buying Emerson (who might be Origi v2).
Kalulu for peanuts?
They brought him in for what, mil? Mil and a half? Loaning him out for 3-3.5mil right off the bat and in case of a purchase, another 17-18mil?
What a ridiculous return…
“will be free to move in February”
Not really, no. He’d be able to sign a contract but there is no mercato open then and his contract bind him to Monaco until the summer. So… Sure, he is available for SIGNING in February but he wouldn’t be able to MOVE until the summer. Unless Monaco let’s him but why would they?
We can talk all we want about who’s right and fair and who’s bad in this situation but a big juicy fact remains – we’re the ones without a proper DM with only few days from new season.
In my opinion (again my opinion before you lot lose your sh*t), Milan are at fault here for not bringing in a DM that we desperately need since Kessie left. They’re on him for more than 2 months and are not capable of bringing him in, knowing damn well the price tag since the start of negotiations. Did they really think Monaco will consider 12 millions? It’s a b*tch slap around the ears.
Wonder if he still has the same snake agent. We lost a lot of cash because of snake agents in then last 5 years.
Kessie out vrancx in. The quality gap is enormous, no wonder we barely make top 5
It’s certainly a take on the situation. But apparently the need for a DM doesn’t seem urgent enough to the people who run the club, some of whom have been in football for a bit, and to two head coaches, who have definitely been professional coaches for a bit. So maybe the need isn’t as critical as you think? It makes no sense to not have signed a DM, any DM (as in even a no-name real DM being an asset), including many that have been bought and sold for less than Fofana, if the need is THAT real. It seems like Fofana is a very specific target, and that if we don’t get him maybe nobody else comes in at that position. If you look at it in this light, holding out for our price until the window shuts makes sense. It is possible that they simply don’t consider DM to be urgent, despite what we think. Otherwise why spend 18M on a CB when you had four already, including one we’re about to sell who everyone thinks is world class?
“But apparently the need for a DM doesn’t seem urgent enough to the people who run the club, some of whom have been in football for a bit, and to two head coaches, who have definitely been professional coaches for a bit. So maybe the need isn’t as critical as you think? It makes no sense to not have signed a DM, any DM (as in even a no-name real DM being an asset), including many that have been bought and sold for less than Fofana, if the need is THAT real. ”
This! And you don’t need a dedicated DM if everyone on the pitch gets involved in defending too. It’s still a team sport and the best TEAM will usually win the trophies – not the teams with the best specialists.
So the people that praised Milan for the Pavlo deal are now the same people that criticize the same strategy to land Fofana? LMAO!!!
Right on….
It’s not a fireproof strategy, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.
It will be one thing if we already had defensive midfielders and just looking to improve this position, but so far we have none.
In Pavlovic’s case we at least already had central defenders.
Also, we didn’t lowball that much for Pavlovic. That 12M€ offer was outrageous.
Mocanda must rise his bid for fofana get the deal done before are first march against Torino on Saturday
No more Americans!
The initial 12m offer was outrageous. Period. At the same time, if Monaco are so rich that they genuinely do not care about money at all, then why did they not accept the 12m in the first place? The more you think about it the more it makes sense that the initial offer was extremely disrespectful and outrageous. Had they nodded their head to such a ridiculous offer they would have set a bad example harming the player’s value and the club’s image. Going forward any club that wishes to get a player who is in their last year with Monaco can just cut the asking price in half, walk over the club and seal the deal. It is just disrespectful.