With more and more reports emerging suggesting that AC Milan have far from an unlimited budget this summer, the club have to be wise with every penny they spend.
La Gazzetta dello Sport writes how new owner Gerry Cardinale has often cited the use of ‘Moneyball’ made famous from the film and the revolutionary MLB General Manager Billy Beane while at the Oakland Athletics, who had a low budget but were able to build a team that made the play-offs against the odds.
“Billy Beane and I have the same vision of things. It is often said that to win you have to spend a lot of money, but why? I say that you have to be smarter than others and not sacrifice money. I believe in the Moneyball method,” he is cited as saying.
The paper writes that they reached out to five companies and gave them some information on Milan’s three main positions to strengthen and the characteristics they are looking for, with Driblab, Stats Perform and Wallabies taking on the challenge.
The first position is centre-back, and they told the data firms that they must find a young player (under 25), with a good physical build, who is strong in aerial duels, with good ability in build-up play that is under €35m.
Driblab’s algorithms lead to four players: Anel Ahmedhodzic (Bordeaux), Benoit Badiashile (Monaco), Dan Axel Zagadou (Borussia Dortmund) and Duje Caleta Car (Marseille, just over age).
Opta found on Zagadou, Badiashile, Evan N’Dicka (Eintracht Frankfurt) and Gabriel Magalhães (Arsenal). Wallabies suggests Pau Torres (Villarreal), Nico Schlotterbeck (SC Freiburg, bought by Borussia Dortmund), Josko Gvardiol (RB Leipzig) and Gabriel Magalhães.
Then, La Gazzetta asked for central midfielders who have similar characteristics to the outgoing Franck Kessie, given the need to replace the Ivorian.
Driblab suggested Ibrahim Sangaré of PSV, Khéphren Thuram of OGC Nice, Jerdy Schouten of Bologna and Davide Frattesi of Sassuolo. Stats Perform picked out Abdoulaye Doucouré of Everton, Douglas Luiz of Aston Villa and Bryan Cristante of Roma, who has actually been linked.
Wallabies identified Matheus Nunes (Sporting CP), Florian Neuhaus (Borussia Monchengladbach), Bruno Guimaraes (Newcastle United) and Youri Tielemans (Leicester City).
Finally, they asked the three firms to find a right winger who can also play as a central attacking midfielder, therefore a profile missing from Milan’s attack to be more complete and unpredictable. Only Driblab and Wallabies answered this task essentially for questions relating to the search criteria.
Driblab replied with Noni Madueke (PSV Eindhoven), Rayan Cherki (Lyon), Samuel Chukwueze (Villarreal) and Callum Hudson-Odoi (Chelsea). Wallabies instead proposed Jarrod Bowen (West Ham), Tete (who recently moved from Shakhtar Donetsk to Lyon) and Viktor Tsygankov (Dynamo Kiev).
Those just outside the parameters were Antony (Ajax), Moussa Diaby (Bayer Leverkusen) and Marco Asensio (Real Madrid).
