Summer Mercato

[Acmir]

Is Essien a better player than Cristante? Does he deserve to play more than Cristante? We can't sell him for a good sum of money and that's the only reason why he's in our team.

Well, ask yourself this: Who would you rather have come on the pitch when we're in the last ten minutes of a decisive match for 3rd place in the league against a team like Roma or Fiorentina, and we're leading 3-2? Cristante or Essien? I know who I'd prefer.

That being said, Cristante is a very talented young player. Unfortunately we are probably going to have to let some of our talents go as time passes. The benchmark for being kept by Milan should be players like El Shaarawy and De Sciglio, who at a very young age were able to become regular starters for Milan. Cristante is talented and will grow into a fine player. Players like the two I mentioned though, will grow into being truly world class, and that is what we need.

With that kind of thinking we will never develop a single young player. I would never put Essien in a game of that importance knowing his brainfarts and stupid mistakes when he played for Chelsea as well as playing for us earlier in this pre-season.If we really cared for our youth project we would have done the same thing that Chelsea did, a dry loan of Cristante to some team to get more playing experience. However, Galliani's greed for money is the only reason for this deal. We don't have money to buy good players yet we sell our most promising youngsters, talk about logic.