Monday Discussion Thread

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Great place for team discussion/whatever Serie A related topics you would like to bring up. Examples: Transfers, rumors, players from other teams, things you miss about the old days etc. Whatever you want as long as it isn't too off-topic.

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[u/ComradePoula]

Something that may have gone under the radar is that we made sure to push a lot of the revenues from sales to next year. And I think that makes a ton of sense.

Excluding the Reijnders sale, because that went into last year's accounts to make up for the lost CL revenue, we made around €115m from sales and freed up a ton of wages. So we ended up spending around €50m, give or take, including the change in the wage bill (plus whatever money we can get for Adli in the next couple of days).

Now looking at next year we have €10m from Morata, €10m from Colombo (if Genoa stay up, which they 100% will), €8m from Pobega, around €20m from Alex Jimenez, €5m from Terracciano (if Cremonese stay up) and then another €50m if both Musah and Chukwueze have their buy options triggered. So that's around €100m if things go as planned. And you add in the sales of Bennacer and Bondo, who will most likely leave next year as well, and we would be looking at a similar figure to this year without changing anything in the current squad.

All things considered, we have at least €53m coming in from sales next summer even if Musah and Chukwueze shit the bed. Add in the usual €50m we get for transfers each season, and we should hopefully be able to add to the squad without having to sacrifice anyone.

[u/veintiuno → u/ComradePoula]

Agree! To add a bit more: Milan's financial woes in the early 2020s and before were ... bad. Berlusconi's glory days were about spending on vibes and Yonghong Li's reliance on high interest loans (from Elliot) to fund player acquisitions ultimately knee-capped the club vis-a-vis UEFA's Financial Fair Play rules. COVID didn't help either and Serie A infrastructure and underwhelming media deals have been a drag on Milan. Elliott Management, to their credit, was ok, but running a club is not really their thing and FFP shackles were more than they wanted to deal with. Honestly, Redbird has been surprisingly solid as an owner. They've been super-strict with spending by necessity, yet Milan still finished second in Serie A and reached the semi's of UCL during their ownership (they haven't been perfect or without some mistakes). That they've gotten the club profitable again and saw two consecutive years of profitability is a minor miracle, even if it meant selling Tonali (without going into whether he requested the transfer). Supporters don't necessarily see the long-game at play either: working to improve Serie A's international reach vis-a-vis RedBird's stake in Paramount/Skydance and pursuing a club-owned stadium is important to long term competitiveness and sustainability in a world of mega clubs with global brands. The long-last butt-hurt and persistent belly-aching over Maldini's exit has been completely dumb and a hinderance (he's a big boy, he's ok). End of [minor] Rant.

[u/ComradePoula → u/veintiuno]

Agree with everything you said. Redbird have been pretty much flawless financially speaking and sooner or later that will translate on the pitch with everyone else in the league being handicapped by their finances.

Clashing with Maldini when you have only been in the club for less than a year was dumb, but looking back at it now, it was always inevitable. But other than that, they aren't stubborn and have shown that they'll try to fix their mistakes.

Betting on Fonseca is still their biggest mistake, but I'm still someone that sees the vision behind that decision. Even though I'm Allegri's biggest fan here, as evident by my profile picture, Fonseca's ideas are something that we're gonna have to move to at some point because managers like Allegri are a dying breed nowadays. But hopefully the transition will be smoother at that point.

[u/SignoreLanky11 → u/ComradePoula]

Wow incredible to see some reasonable takes here finally. The majority of this sub fails to recognize the stability Red Bird/Elliot have brought despite some mistakes on the sporting side. We're in a much better position than we were towards the end of the Berlusconi era and the Chinese saga.

[u/Sankaritarina → u/SignoreLanky11]

Some of you seriously need to think about a hobby related to accounting instead of football lol. People here are fans of Milan, not Gerry Cardinale's financial career, they aren't going to spend their time talking about how great our finance reports are after we finished 8th in Italy and got knocked out of Europe by Feyenoord. Levy oversaw arguably the most impressive project in modern football in terms of financial growth, something that RedBird and most other club owners/presidents can only dream of, yet he was still constantly criticised over a lack of trophies. And that's with Tottenham's stature and resources in England being comparably worse than ours in Italy.

So until that mythical future where our fiscal responsibility turns into trophies finally arrives, Milan fans won't be enthusiastic about RedBird's financial achievements.

[u/SignoreLanky11 → u/Sankaritarina]

The fact that you're comparing a Premier League club's situation with ours sums up the general delusion here. How are Tottenham's resources worse? They had revenues of over $500 million last year. Levy's incompetence can't be compared with us. The sooner people realize that we can't compete dollar for dollar with the premier league, the better you'll feel about our situation.

[u/Sankaritarina → u/SignoreLanky11]

Read my comment again, I specifically said that Tottenham's situation is comparably worse than ours (in terms of winning titles) given that they play in England and we play in Italy. So while they might have more resources than us overall, in the context of Serie A and the PL, it is much harder for Spurs to win trophies.