Bournemouth, a relegation team in the EPL, signed Dango Ouattara for €28m. That's our whole year's transfer kitty. A small team, fighting relegation, can spend our entire transfer budget on a single unknown player.
Tell me, why did we back out of the Super League project? [emoji16]
The Super League is already here - in the form of the English Premiere League!
Spezia defender Jakub Kiwior, previously linked with Milan, has joined Arsenal. Fee in excess of €20m with add-ons.
Spezia selling players for €25m and relegation English sides buying them for €28m...but, fine as we are.
Superleague would make us one of the rich ones I suppose but it will still remain a small set of teams with big money, sad for football. There are 100s of club owners outside of EPL, come up with something to counter EPL money.
Super league was the need of the hour, everyone turned reactionary against SL at that time citing that it was against the soul of the game when English clubs keep f*king the already dead soul of Football
Forza Diavolo ale!!!
Sampdoria and Milan are negotiating over a loan move for Yacine Adli - a dry loan without a buy-option until the end of the season was discussed.
Not sure what's there to negotiate. If they want him, let them have him. Even if we have to pay his wages in the entirety. Same needs to happen for Thiaw. We invested in these players. We need them to play and develop. Rotting on the bench isn't doing anyone good.
As for the EPL and super league, an EU league could technically work from a legal perspective. work. One without the British and one that will include relegation and promotion from domestic leagues. Essentially, if you have a 20 team league, 8-10 need to be 'relegated' each year and be replaced with top finishers in domestic leagues. The top 10-12 teams get to stay and play the following year. It essentially replaces the CL in a way, w8th the difference of guaranteed participation the following season if you end up in the 1st 12 positions. Te domestic leagues will need to agree, but I doubt that'll happen. That'll more or less demote them to second grade competitions, where finishing top means qualification to the EU league.
On top of that, some other issues are that the Germans will never agree, while PSG doesn't need money so they'd rather stay on UEFA's good side. That means it comes down to Spain and Italy + maybe the Dutch and Portuguese teas that would provide these "bug" clashes on a regular basis.
But anyway, I doubt this ever happens. Too much politics and too much to lose for certain people/organizations.
I think even without some new league like this, a club like Milan can grow its revenue in the 500m range. It may not be enough to compete with the top EPL teams for every player on the market, but I think it will give us a lot to work with and make us very competitive when it comes to market operations.
Super League getting killed was never about anything other than control. UEFA was not going to allow these clubs to go rogue and do their own thing without them being in control of it. They also have absolutely ZERO interest in actually levelling the playing field for everyone financially like they keep saying they do. If EPL is 10X the financial powerhouse everyone else is? Oh well, no problem. If PSG has a billion euros a year of fake sponsorships? We don't see any issues with that. Fairness is just an excuse for UEFA to slap around teams like Milan, nothing more
As far as EPL is concerned, there is something weird that I don't understand. If you look at club revenue, certainly you can see EPL clubs doing very well, but the gap between them and us shouldn't be this big. For example, Deloitte just reported that we have the 16th highest revenue among all clubs in the world. That means, only 7 of the EPL teams had higher revenue than us. How is it then that when those small EPL clubs are out there writing big checks to sign players that we had to sit back and argue over 100K euros for every transfer? We can't just explain everything away with "well, EPL is just rich". It seems like our philosophy is to have an incredibly tiny budget even though our revenue could potentially support something bigger. And that is not on EPL teams being rich, that is on our ownership and management
I agree. I have thought about the same thing, especially when it came out recently that our revenue is approaching 350m this fiscal year, which is apparently on par with Arsenal. Yet, they go and sign Kiwior for 25m in January like it's nothing. So yes, it's very weird. We get fed this narrative that Italian clubs simply can't compete in the market, but how can that be true??? Maybe not against the top 5-6 EPL clubs...but how can we not compete with Crystal Palace, Leeds, etc?
I think you are right and it essentially comes to strategy. They are willing to leverage while we are not. Also, some of their guaranteed income is higher maybe? Like TV rights and certain EPL marketing income? Meaning that even if they don't do well for a year or two, the risk of financial impact from these signings isn't as big? What I mean is, if Milan invests 150m, yet we miss out on the CL for example, it will lead to some financial problems because all of a sudden we'll get a big reduction in revenue and maybe sponsorships as well will follow.
I don't know. Just thinking. Because like you, I fail to come up with reasons as to why we can't compete with Leeds for transfers.
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