Banter 2009/2010

Hisham, I was unsure about Shikabala, I just read reports (filgoal.com) that his contract runs out this summer. Even if his contract is to 2012, buying him 4-5 million would be a MASSIVE transfer record for an Egyptian player, I bet we could get him for maybe even less than that, maybe. He really is a great talent, if Napoli grab him, they really will have a gem on their hands.

As far as the revenue goes, if you need balanced books, that doesn't mean you can just spend money until the rule comes into place. Not at all! Why wouldn't Man Utd spend more money than 16 million on Valencia (who is a good player) and 3 million on Obertan while taking Michael Owen for free? They sold Ronaldo for 80 million. The debt that Man Utd is carrying from the owners is what is preventing Ferguson from getting what he wants. Not only did he lose CR, but Tevez, and Berba is useless, you're telling me he didn't want to improve his squad?

The debt levels of teams in England are ridiculous, and looking at Liverpool wobbling, it seems pretty obvious why this rule has to be applied. Sports team do make money, they are not just the focus of billionaires. Look at American sports teams, the way that they make money is not just the stadium, but they have salary caps (some more concrete than others) and they also have a draft system to bring in new players constantly while trades dominate player transfers, rather than fees.

While transfer fees might not go away, the ability for top clubs, without billionaire patrons, to buy top players for top fees will probably become less and less common. These teams many times will borrow the money to pay, the best example is Real Madrid, who got rid of their hundreds of millions of Euros of debt by selling off their old training ground to the government. There are more details in the Real case, but, they have the government supporting them, big time.

Marketing and stadiums are the two biggest problems for Serie A. It seems Spain is raising the taxes on football-level wages, so I think that Spain's appeal will go away. England offers higher wages than anyone, for average players too, and that is the difference. However, the way they got there is not sustainable, that is why Bayern (which has no debt, I believe) has been able to slowly move back closer to its former glory. Sure, some lucky referee decisions (poor Fiorentina) went their way, but, there is a shift here.

When it comes to massive regulation change, it is always in the interest of the party who is affected by this regulation, to adopt earlier. The amount of money we'll be saving on wages from several players leaving is considerable, and Milan now has to assert itself in new markets, and that's why its going after the Middle East, which has plenty of money, and is not necessarily Premier League like South East Asia.

On the other hand, I think Milan knows that they have to attract people to the stadium. Even when we were at our best form this year, we had trouble getting people into the stadium. Our home game at Roma only brought 40,000 people; that's terrible. That means that there has to be players brought in to excite people enough to come in, and I think that's the problem the Milan management is facing. They obviously don't have a lot of money to spend, but they need to attract people or else they will still lose money because of the rent of San Siro.

I don't think they expected that, especially as the team has done well, most of the season. That is one of the biggest reasons why our revenue stream is not as strong as it should be.

We'll see what they do. I wonder if Inter winning the CL will do anything? I hope that Berlusconi will get angry or something and pour money in, and it would be even better to have them relegated to Serie B. But, then I wake up, and realize that it will be Tassotti on the bench and another unknown season ahead.