Another source have confirmed that AC Milan intend to register a second team in the 2024-25 edition of Serie C, after Juventus and Atalanta.
According to TMW, the talks over Milan registering a B-Team in the third division of Italian football at an advanced stage, because the club do not want to fall behind their rivals in Italy when it comes to having a pathway to develop talent.
Davide Bartesaghi signed his first professional contract with the Rossoneri yesterday and he is just 17, while Filippo Scotti also renewed and then there is Francesco Camarda among other talents on the rise.
Inter and Sassuolo have shown interest in registering a team for next year but Milan seem to have moved more concretely. What remains to be seen is what group they will be placed in and whether the rules for the inclusion of a further second team will possibly change.
The first problem is that Milan cannot be placed in the group of Atalanta or Juventus, therefore no group A or B. They will have to be placed in C – that is the one of the teams from the south – with a lot of long away trips.
Milan would have to pay a non-refundable sum of €1.5m to register, but if no one in Serie C were to fail to register, there would be no spare place to take.
For example, Atalanta took the place of Siena who did not present the €1.5m registration fee. It will be a theme to discuss towards the end of the season, but what is certain is that the Rossoneri plan to have an U23 team for the 2024-25 season.
Finally
Urgh, horrible for football overall. I get that Milan are doing it to keep up with others but the slow move to a franchise model continues…
He got the point men!
Buddy all major clubs have B-teams, Real Madrid has a B-Team “The Castilla”, Barcelona has a B-Team, our rivals have B-Teams, people are always complaining about us not developing talent well here you go, I don’t understand why you are complaining especially considering the talent La Masia and La Fabrica has produced over the years. You’re the only one fighting progress has nothing to do with a franchise model, do you even know what a franchise is? It’s better to keep up with the times than fall behind in the archaic ways that Italian football has been stuck in. A B-Team should have players like Camarda get some solid game time against good competition for their age group(U/23).
And if you support a team lower down the pyramid? And your team just gets pushed further down so Serie A clubs can wedge their reserves and kids in there.
I said that Milan are doing it to keep up with the others and so be it, I don’t expect them not to if it’s open to them.
Yes, Spain’s had that for ages. Here in the UK it’s bad enough that there’s a cup competition where the lower division clubs are forced to play their first team against PL U23 sides. Hopefully we’re a long way away from B-Teams in the league here.
And the franchise comment is based on thinking it’ll end up (not tomorrow, but in many years) at something like MLB has, where the top one or two divisions are a closed shop and they ‘own’ the lower division clubs.
The difference though is that the average attendance across the league in Italy’s 3rd tier is slightly higher than in Englands 6th tier and less than half that of Englands 5th tier.
There is a counter argument that says their presence will boost gate receipts – because Milan B will bring more travelling fans than Renate will, and increase general interest in the Italian lower divisions.
No problem. We should just buy one of these Serie C teams for two peanuts and a panini sticker, and defacto make it our U23 team. No need to change the name or anything. Doesn’t ADL own Bari? If for some reason our kids play so well that they one day find themselves threatening promotion from Serie B then just bench the best players for a few games so that some points are dropped😜
@Bo I can’t agree with you more
It’s a daft rule that we can’t be in the same group as Atalanta. At some point there is going to be a forth club wanting to do this so the point becomes moot then anyway.
If the fear is over saturation then just say that there can be no more than 5 U23 teams in any single division. In terms of Serie C that would be a max of 15 – by the time 15 clubs have registered U23 teams, Serie C will have restructured half a dozen times anyway so deal with the problem then.
I don’t get the stupidity of not being able to be in the same group as Atalanta or Juventus.