Milan Report: December 2013
It has been a month since reports surfaced that Adriano Galliani may leave or be fired from the CEO position. Fantasy rumour or otherwise that didn’t materialize but it may yet still. The upcoming summer can see moves for Sean Sogliano, currently sporting director at Verona, or as many wish Maldini, in some managerial role or another. It seems that since last month an ambiguous double role featuring Galliani and Barbara Berlusconi has been created to oversee the future of the team and of course that is followed by promises of more involvement by Silvio Berlusconi himself.
Is Sean Sogliano headed to Milan?
What has happened in the past month alone doesn’t seem to point to much change however. For one, M’Baye Niang has been loaned out to Montpellier apparently with an option to buy. While his contribution was minimal he is yet another young player who appears on the squad, is not seen often, and is then shipped out temporarily or permanently. Bartosz Salamon is one other recent example in a long line of players who are inexplicably part of the team briefly. If the argument is that these players are not good enough to feature for Milan one is even more entitled to question the scouting and purchasing decisions a cash strapped Milan is making. How is it that a player signed for free or bought is deemed unusable so soon after he is signed? Is Riccardo Saponara next to follow in the footsteps of Niang and get shipped out, even if for a few months? Does Jherson Vergara have a future on the team? Is he even good enough?
There are many ways to judge the recent performance in the transfer market, there have been ‘interesting’ buys for so called bargains – Robinho and Ibra arguably fall into that category? – but what of them? Some did help deliver one scudetto but are either gone or in limbo. A look at some recent transfers (a good list was compiled on the forums) paints a poor picture of a sometimes highly regarded transfer guru that is Galliani. Didac Vila, Taye Taiwo, Cristian Zapata, Bakaye Traore, Francesco Acerbi are all part of a list that a financially poor team sometimes paid millions for. This is not even mentioning the likes of Alessandro Matri whose poor goal scoring form is only topped (bottomed?) by his inability or unwillingness to hold the free kick wall.
Is this a case of lack of money handcuffing a vice president or is it just a case of changing times and a team requiring another person who spends less time playing the media game.
There are good arguments to make for Galliani moving on and another person with a new and clear objective for the transfer market replacing him. This new person can better deal with the financial reality that is supposedly up on Milan … and he can also decide who the next coach should be too.
Forza Milan