Journalist Carlo Pellegatti has revealed that he is not totally at ease regarding the renewal of Rafael Leao’s contract with AC Milan.
During a column for MilanNews, Pellegatti revealed that he is ‘a little worried’ about the negotiations concerning Rafael Leao for numerous reasons. Firstly there is the ongoing dispute with Sporting CP which means he will have to pay them a figure of over €16m, and then there is the hiring of a new figure – one ‘like a lawyer’ – which ‘seems to be wanted by his father’.
In the background there is still the agent Jorge Mendes who knows how to get good moves for his client, and there ‘are all elements that do not leave me calm’, Pellegatti adds.
Above all, he ‘would like to understand what the intentions of the powerful Portuguese agent are’ with regards to the Portuguese winger, because the contributions that Leao made towards the end of last season in the Scudetto win certainly raise the stakes in the talks over extending his contract.
PAY THE MAN
The experience of the past years is that any case which became a saga, never happened in the end: Donna, Kessie, Chalha renewals but also some transfers (i.e. Simakan, Favre).
(The replacements/alternatives turned out to be better but the truth is that a lot of money has been lost).
Leao renewal is already a saga. I think there are more chances that Leao does not renew in the end. This would ok only if he is sold THIS summer. Next summer will be already too late, he might lose 30-40% of his transfer value – let alone the risk of stay one for year and leave for free. For him it should be either renew (hopefully) or sell in the next month.
If next month still not extend contract ,just sell him to highest bid for funding transfer CDK & noa Lang ( LW replacement)
U make sense bro
If he expresses any doubt then sell him still this summer for a high profit.
bye bye Rafa, its was a pleasure. Never will understand why he had to spend his first year at bench. Theo will leave too very soon, but its ok – Milan will cannot pay those salaries, not in first year back in UCL after 7years missing…
LOL. Quite the drama queen, eh? 😀
Bye bye plastic
Why? Because he was basically useless for most of his time at Milan. He played good 6 months. I think you won’t understand a lot of things.
SELL THE MAN
I do hope the club are sounding out options to see if there are any takers.
If he stays then he’ll have to earn that next pay cheque from another club in two years’ time, so we should at least expect some great performances from him in the meantime.
I completely get it from Leao’s point of view, unlike most in his position he does actually have a need to chase the highest salary and I certainly wouldn’t begrudge him it, but hopefully he realises that taking a contract extension with Milan, even with an achievable release clause, will give him decent stability.
The issue is that by being a free agent, he’d effectively be able to obtain a huge chunk of the money he owes as a sign on fee, so if he can sustain good performances for two years that’s probably the better outcome for him personally.
Just pay the guy, people who are less important in their teams are paid far better, Milan should throw away this newly found midtable mentality…keep your best players and build around them, thats how serious team work, selling Leao or not paying him will show that Redbird are just here to fill their pocket and have no regard for Milan fans or Milan club itself
I’ve already said that, if we are going to be a selling club and develop players that is horrible. But this is what it looks like. If you can’t offer a player an amount that a mediocre attacker at Aston Villa gets then you can’t compete with PSG, City, Real, Bayern, etc. No way.
Thing is, taking PSG and Manchester City out of the equation (because they’d rather pay lawyers to cheat the books instead), the big clubs are selling clubs.
You’ve got the ones like Chelsea and Madrid who have a business model based on sales (both have sold ~€500m in the last 4 years; Madrid were doing it as part of the strategy to afford M’Bappe in FFP) that Milan don’t come close to.
Then you’ve got the likes of Liverpool and Bayern. Both of those teams regularly sell big players or allow them to leave (see Liverpool’s negotiation with Mane and Salah and Bayern’s with Alaba) and yes they spend more than Milan but they’ve had 10+ years in the Champion’s League so they have those funds. Both have a similar amount made to Milan in the last 4 years (€150-200m) but both have bigger incomes.
Any of the mid-table English clubs make a similar amount in TV money to Milan’s income from Serie A and UCL combined, so they’re the financial competition at the moment.
So Milan have to sell players. It has to be the business model to be able to buy and reinvest. Last year’s success was based on buying Leao, Kessie, Bennacer, Krunic and Hernandez in ’19/’20. Selling one of them for crazy money could fund a similar incoming group of players for the future (eg Botman, Lang, CDK, Sanches).
Which big player did Liverpool sell since Klopp came? You can’t make stuff up. Bayern is trying to force Lewandowski to stay, even though he publicly said he wants to leave. What are you talking about? Bayern sold one 1st team player in the past 10 years, which others but Thiago? And they sold them below the market value, not to make money and finance other transfers.
It’s fair to point out that I said “big” players, which is probably a mistake, but players they’re made decent money on regardless.
I also said “or allow them to leave”. Bayern have let several players go because they haven’t wanted to break a salary structure; Alaba, Sule, Thiago arguably Hummel’s.
Liverpool certainly have no need to sell, with the UCL and PL money, but they’re refusing to break the bank for Sane and Salah at the moment and have regularly sold squad players for decent €15m+ (Solanke, Ings, Wilson, Ward).
Point being, Milan are making similar sales to those teams but without their level of consistent income. So you can’t expect the same spending. Thus selling a single player for a huge sum would allow a large investment back into the squad.
Either way it’s a gamble. You can break the bank for Leao and maybe he might not continue to perform, but now you have to pay every player and signing more. Or you can sell him and hope replacement players bed in quickly enough to secure UCL qualification and income. It’s sport, there are no guarantees.
I think Leao is not in a position to refuse ACM offer. If he does then ACM may decide not to sell him and in that case he would not be able to pay the 16 million debt to Sporting. That means that he would be in a very bad position for the next 2 years because he wouldn’t have enough money to pay the debt and he would have to perform extremely well (which is good for ACM) to keep his value, otherwise, if he is not playing well then no one would want him after those two years which would completely destroy him (and his debt would hang on him like a heavy weight). In both cases ACM wins.
Or, we sell him now for 150 million and then he sits on a bench in some other club and out budget is filled very well 🙂
IIRC it’s 20% of his salary per year until it’s repaid, so not an instant thing.
Yes, he pays 20%, he is in position to do whatever he wants, including agreeing on a free transfer with City or whoever and getting 20M signing fee to cover that. When the club he is at did not offer to pay it I would personally do just that even if I am a Milan fan for a long long time.
Well they should offer him a proper amount and not leave him with a 16.5M debt, that will increase to over 20M with interest. So, Leao playing at Milan for 4 years, he would leave with the same debt, as he would only manage to pay the interest during that period. So, if you have a situation where another club says we will pay for your transfer, cover the 16.5M in one go (so on interest) and pay you 8M I don’t see him staying. Why would he when Milan couldn’t offer to pay at least half of his fine? For me, that is below Milan standard.