AC Milan are in the market for a replacement after Brahim Diaz returned to Real Madrid and the algorithm has come up with a name, a report claims.
According to TuttoUdinese – which is part of the TMW network – Milan have identified Lazar Samardzic as the ideal replacement for Brahim Diaz, after the Spaniard has officially returned to the Spanish capital.
The Rossoneri management selected the Udinese playmaker with their ‘Moneyball’ algorithm, a method originally introduced in baseball with the aim of helping general managers identify the most useful players for their team.
It is a process that Gerry Cardinale wanted to introduce to Milan to optimise costs and make better decisions in buying players. It does not only take into consideration the usual parameters of a player, either.
Moneyball also considers some subtle aspects that can determine the success or failure of a transfer, such as nutrition management, sleep management and so on.
Thanks to this algorithm, it seems that Samardzic is the ideal attacking midfielder for Milan and though they will have to negotiate with Udinese, the Serbian is the Rossoneri’s number one target as per the source.
This is a great move!
I don’t know anything about baseball, I just watched the movie with Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill, so I have one question for people with knowledge on the matter: did this method worked again with Oakland after their triumph or with any other MLB team after that? Just curious.
Just about every team in the world uses analytics these days to complement traditional scouting. The use of the term “Moneyball” is just lazy reporting linking a very common practice to a term coined long ago to derive value from statistical analysis. American owners = Moneyball for some reason for some reporters. The reality is this is not a novelty in modern day football (soccer).
To answer your question though, the Oakland Atheltics never won the World Series during that era of the movie.
Other teams have won using analytics though as per my earlier point.
Yes exactly this..most teams nowadays use data analytics in some form or the other to recruit players. It’s made to look like it’s something revolutionary going to happen at Milan but I doubt they’ll do
So after Oakland used it to great success, other teams jumped onto that concept more and more and it became an arms race in the sport (no pun intended).
These days, baseball market is hugely data driven and, much like football, there’s a lot of innovation in the creation and analysis of new statistics and how those interact with the needs of the club.
The movie dramatises it obviously, it’s not like it was a brand new idea at the time, but the idea of moving past outdated scouting methods towards data is captured well IMO, if making pantomime villains of a lot of characters.
However, ‘moneyball’ is just lazy journalistic shorthand. It’s not something that doesn’t exist in football and you just have to look at how clubs like Brentford, Udinese themselves, Brighton and others have been acquiring players; look to less glamourous leagues and clubs, get players who’s statistics check out into the club, loan them out through an established loan network and then integrate them when ready.
You need the infrastructure in place though, it doesn’t happen overnight. There a reason more and more top clubs have loan managers to foster relationships with other clubs and managers, to make sure the players are placed in the right environments to develop.
This. Also, the technical term for “moneyball” is “sabermetrics” and it’s actually been around since the 1970s. And to add a little color, the whole point of sabermetrics at Oakland was to achieve a competitive team on a small budget vs. large budget teams using more traditional scouting. They did it, and made it to the playoffs with much smaller wage budgets than their competitors. Then their competitors caught on and started using sabermetrics in combination with their larger budgets to pull away. If everyone is using sabermetrics then the playing field is even and it will once again come down to money, but in between there is a window.
New york yankee win world series after using the same method with oakland 2 years from oakland record
Thanks for you answers guys.
I didn’t use any algorithms when I was impressed by him dominate the Milan midfield and practically walk with ease to create the first goal of the match. He could be useful.
Agreed.
Media will now throw in “Money ball” algorithms, analytics to explain Milan interest in every player.
This is a player that Moncada has followed since he was at Hertha. Milan was after him way before he moved to Leipzig and then Udinese.
Nothing to do with money ball
Its highly unlikely that we can afford Samardzic as udineses president earlier has said they would like to keep him and would only sell him if they got a 40 mil bid, obviously that stance may have changed for the 2023/24 season but doubt he will come cheap.
According to trasfermarkt his value is 7.5 mil. So Udinese asking for 40 mil is too high. If we gonna buy him somewhere between 10-15 mil should be enough.
Honestly I am very curious about the mercato this season.
1. We will focus on free agents whose typically ask for higher salaries. Wage Cap thing.
2. We will focus on young and prospective players, which also cost money. Even Leao was bought for around 30 mil.
3. Someone have to negotiate and close the deals and also influence players to join us. I am skeptical about this quality in Furlani.
Personally i really like transfermarkt for stats but it isnt an exact science in regard of transfer fees but if the president wants 40 mil for the plkayer then it realy doesnt matter what his true value is and i highly doubt we would be able to persuade udinese to sell him for 10-15 mil. The player is important for udinese and the same with beto who both basically means the ligurians can stay up in serie a therefore those players wont be sold sold for a lower fee than 30-40 mil each and i can easily see it from the club presidents perspective. They are not here to serve us but themselves,
1: Personally i wouldnt mind if our entire mercato was free transfers considering it would greatly help the clubs finances but it should be the right transfers but unfortunately i agree the salary cap restricts us in that matter,
2: sure but it wont be the top quality youth if cardinale wants to act a miser because then other clubs will pick up our first choices.
3: i have my questions marks in regard of furlani as well, as i would have preferred maldini staying because if anyone has a lure in regard of players it would be him.
Anyways i think this mercato will turn out horrible but ill wait with my final verdict when the transfer window closes.
Why Acmilan did not go for Daichi kamada for free transfer and Acmilan will be talking about so many players but all the end of the transfer nothing done yet.I believe now Acmilan can sign some quality players
First of all its just rumors, kamada might arrive unless he has signed for a different club while ive been a sleep.
kamarda might be good but but i wouldnt keep my hopes up for us to sign quality signings as the club seems to be far to limited in available funds if rumors are to be believed, 35 mil 🙁
Did Maldini and Massara use the algorithm to decide the chase him more than 6 months ago?
Maldini and Massara follow Moncada’s recommendation like they always did when signing young players. That includes CdK, Adli, Hauge, etc.
so maldini signed CDK based on Moncada’s recommendations? and moncada is still around?
all those journalists that hyped him and other signings suddenly say it was his fault? how come the metrics that prophesied CDK was going to be a good player are suddenly gone with the wind?
they just gave a dog a bad name to hang it!
It’s funny to see how in last summer they said CdK is Moncada’s recommendation and after a bad season they say Maldini decided on its signing without listening to advice from others.
How and why are Moncada’s views on players so public?
It started to bug me / strike me as an unusual fact hiding in plain sight more recently as it became something that the SM guys started to talk about on the podcast.
I can understand M&M’s views becoming public. They make contact with player agents who leak stories to media. It is virtually impossible for them to operate in secret without complete buy-in from someone they have no control over (i.e. player agent).
But why Moncada’s views? He is a scout contracted to and paid by Milan. His IP is Milan’s IP while he works for Milan. Is he leaking stories? I doubt it. Is someone on his staff? Maybe. There is significant damage that can be done if his views about players are leaked early. It could cause rival clubs to jump at intended targets earlier than they otherwise would. .
Is it seriously being suggested that Maldini, the guy who supposedly would not listen to anyone, was giving on-the-record credit to Moncada for everything Maldini did? Or that it was Massara?
Did Maldini need Moncada or sabremetrics to tell him Samardzic is a good player? Can he not watch Serie A matches?
I am always sceptical of claims that it is the guy operating in the background, whose views are not public and who is not directly responsible for decisions being made, who is really running, or the brains of, the operation.
My suspicion is that Moncada has been set up as this all knowing figure, likely by someone inside, likely Furlani. That way when Cardinale wanted to move Maldini on, so Red Bird could take credit for the existing project at Milan going forward, he has his yes-man in Furlani but also the credibility of Moncada to sell to a fanbase furious with Maldini’s removal.
I am reading a lot about a new approach that is delivering an identical set of targets. To the extent there is a difference, there has been a release of the purse strings to enable us to target Thuram (previously on the short list but too expensive).
Almost everything we are being told about the decision relating to Maldini and the ‘new’ post-Maldini approach can be directly contradicted by publicly available information. That means there is no reason to take any of this at face value.
Well, Maldini and Massara are not scout. I never hear Maldini went scouting. So it is obvious that he doesn’t have expertise on young players, especially abroad.
All young player signings at Milan, the credits of finding/identifying them should be given to Moncada as he is the chief/head scout. Meanwhile, Maldini should get the credit of convincing them to join Milan project. It has always been a teamwork.
And identifying scout’s target can be done by following his schedule as scout often watch match from the stands.
Because stats and analytics can only go so far. And yes CDK was a Moncada recommendation in conjunction with other which has now become solely Maldini’s “fault” though the jury is still out with regards to him
Funny isn’t it?
Two players that, being Belgian and French, look much more like Moncada targets than Maldini targets, who didn’t work out and who cost EU45m are strangely absent from Moncada’s reported list of targets.
I have little doubt that Tonali and Pellegri, for example, were exclusively Maldini targets.
Last summer, sempremilan published articles that claim CDK is Moncada’s recommendation. Well, obviously that was before he became flop.
As for Hauge, Moncada publicly stated it himseld. Obviously, that was before Hauge ended up being sold.
Sempremilan claim that Maldini move for CdK because of Moncada’s recommendation:
sempremilan*com/moncada-maldini-milan-invest-de-ketelaere
Milan News claim that everyone (including Elliot and Pioli) agreed on signing CdK:
sempremilan*com/mn-everyone-milan-ketelaere-ziyech
Moncada had been scouting CdK since 2020:
sempremilan*com/cm-a-busy-sunday-for-milans-scouts-the-three-potential-signings-they-will-watch
Moncada revealed his scouting of Hauge:
sempremilan*com/moncada-reveals-incredible-background-on-hauge-signing-at-least-20-teams-called-us
Adli and Pellegri among the list of Moncada’s discovery:
footballnews24*it/milan-geoffrey-moncada-luomo-chiave-della-societa-rossonera/
Moncada talks scouting data as well as role of Maldini:
sempremilan*com/moncada-gives-fascinating-insight-on-three-signings-milans-scouting-process-and-maldinis-influence
Agree with what you posted. And thanks for the links.
I agree, and fully expect, that there was a collaborative process all along – contrary to what has been reported.
Moncada and his network would identify talent, not directly in the line of sight of Maldini and Massara, and provide his views. Maldini and Massara would then need to watch enough to satisfy themselves (as they surely could not just sign a player on Moncada’s recommendation alone).
It’s not like Moncada can do it all himself anyway. He is reliant on his network. So I am not convinced he sees that much more of many of the reported targets than what Maldini and Masara would. I’d say his role was more to separate the wheat from the chaff (meaning that he sees a lot more of players to exclude them from the short list). To the extent there is a game or 2 they all need to see I assume they all watch.
I don’t credit Moncada with 16 year old Italians scoring in the Serie A, just as I don’t credit Moncada or sabermetrics with ‘identifying’ gun midfield talent at a feeder club like Udinese. What’s next, the algorithm identifies Hojlund and Scalvini as good players?
Where Moncada will really make his money is the Primavera. That’s where there is real uncertainty about the players, where the keen eye of a quality scout is really tested, and also where Milan is most likely to recapture its former glory (at least in the next decade if such a thing is possible).
Lol Stanley you got the receipts bro! 😂😂😂
I knew I could recall it being from Moncada and co. And I’ve been saying there’s no way Maldini would go out on a limb to sign CDK or mostly anyone in attack to be frank. I can see how flexing his way with a defender though which tbh all worked out well anyways (but of course we’re not going to say that because it doesn’t fit the narrative)
Gerry at least hire Brad Pitt, he could inject more cash than you….
Acmilan must sign this guy and kamanda as our attacking midfield then we can also include CDK and Adli with money to convince Udinese to give us that players.
Moneyball are good but in the end you still need money too. Samardzic are udinese gems, there is no way they will sell him cheap 15-20m euro , most likely 30m euro above
He won’t be cheap. €40 million for Sanardzic and Beto (half the payments next season) will go a long way to addressing our main problem areas.
CDK was identified using the “MoneyDownToiletBall” algorithm… obviously its a much less popular algorithm.
I think I’m gonna puke……
I believe everything still come down to money invested wisely and all the allegations against Maldini and Massara were wrongly adjudged on the facts that Calhanouglu,Romagnoli,Donnaruma and Kessie all left without the club making a dime on them because Gazidis was also around when all this happened,so it’s wrong to make Maldini and Massara the scapegoat of the Management flaws.So moneyball want Samardiz and Udinise won’t sell for nothing less than €30m based on the potential capacity of the player and that’s more or less 90% of AC Milan summer budget.So now tell how does that solve the pressing issues Milan is facing right now?
The solution I repeat and even the blind can see the writing on the wall for the moneyball algorithms must work here,Cardinale still has to invest heavily first of all with at least €150m in the first team and that doesn’t necessarily mean that the aforementioned amount must be exhausted in a single window and after that moneyball can be used to sign young and vibrant players for the Primaveras of the club and by that Redbird and Cardinale can institutionalised their moneyball ideas.So without being smart everything still come down to money.
As someone who’s worked with stats in sports many moons ago, I can tell you data analytics have been quite commonplace for most sports teams in the last 25+ years. There’s nothing revolutionary here. Matter of fact one can say that mostly all teams are on the same playing field when it comes to analytics. Not that there aren’t ones that have better models than others or that one scout is inherently better but for the most part, those things can be bought if a club is really serious.
Also as someone who also plays sport, I get frustrated at the pure stats ppl. It’s takes a scouting eye to actually combine the stats with the visual analysis to be make a significant difference (but you can also model.the intangibles believe it or not so there that too, just in case there’s another stats guy on the forum lo). Otherwise it’s all numbers and most clubs have them anyways..
On another note, there are some stats in recent times that would have made some of our work easier back in the day like xG and xA.