Banter 2009/2010

Berlu could have sold Milan easily, some buyers don't even care if the club is in debt of 60m or not. If his company was cutting emplayees was the reason it couldn't spend on the club, it's politics, and who knows how much is there, calciopoli, the fine to his company...though it's not deniable that he cares less about the team, as Maldini has pointed out, he used to pick up players himself, but not any more.

If you are getting old and your children are not interested in you business, no matter a cafe or a bank, you'd sell it sooner or later. Berlu's waiting for a successor who knows football and be able to pump in money for 20-30 years, and hoping a sound management team outstands other European powerhouses. We'll see this summer, my bet is Dzeko and Krasic will arrive.

Originally Posted by Gabriel489

Dev, if he worked for Pool's youth/scout over the past few years, he really aint that good. As beside Agger, the rest of the younger Pool players ain't that good. Torres does not count as everybody but Berlu and Galli know he has potential.

During his time at Liverpool, he wasn't the head scout from what I know, just the Italian scout due to a good relationship with Benitez (and I'm not even sure if he was there when they got Dossena and Aquilani).

And an empty stadium during home games is great for the BRAND IMAGE.

From a business standpoint, the fact that Milan did not purchase any superstars or make any noise during the summer after the sale of Kaka would only means they are saving up the money for other use. IE to balance the book. There is really no sugarcoating the fact that Milan had gone really cheap over the past years.

On top of that, it is really hard to build itself to be a brand name if you don't have stars. Maybe Berlu still think Dinho and Beckham are superstars and a media magnets....but take a look at the latest Nike and Addias commercials for the past few years. How often do you see Dinho or Beckham anymore? Beside Kaka, name one player from the Milan set up who regularly appears in the big 4 of sports marketing-shoes, clothes, drinks and food? Then you look at teams like Arsenal(Cesc, Van Persie, Arshvin)-actually the whole team as they were in the Nike Commercial, Pool(Torres, Gerrard and Babel), ManU(Rooney, Rio and Giggs)-same as Arsenal), Barcelona(Messi, Iniesta, Ibra, Henry, Xavi), Real(Kaka, CR9, RVN, Raul), Chelsea(Terry, Ballack, Lampard), Juve(Canna, Trez, DP, Buffon), Inter(Sneijder), and Roma(Totti and De Rossi).

Marketing is a great way to earn extra money for the clubs by really not doing a great deal. Yet, Milan had done a horrible job at marketing themselves as a brand, which is something that really puzzles me.

Originally Posted by ACMILAN1983

During his time at Liverpool, he wasn't the head scout from what I know, just the Italian scout due to a good relationship with Benitez (and I'm not even sure if he was there when they got Dossena and Aquilani).

I actually forgot about Dossena and Aquilani as they rarely play anymore. It would be horrible if he recommanded those two for Benitez.

Have a look at these stats on our team... They're quite interesting, and further solidify our viewpoints on certain players, ie. Oddo. I also think Pato would be dissapointed with his lack of assists. Bringing that into his game would make him deadly.

http://soccernet.espn.go.com/team/squad?id=103&cc=3436

Originally Posted by Saliwonczyk

Have a look at these stats on our team... They're quite interesting, and further solidify our viewpoints on certain players, ie. Oddo. I also think Pato would be dissapointed with his lack of assists. Bringing that into his game would make him deadly.

http://soccernet.espn.go.com/team/squad?id=103&cc=3436

Thanks for the link, I especially liked the:

Pato Fouls Commited - 13; Pato Fouls Suffered - 50

Originally Posted by Saliwonczyk

Have a look at these stats on our team... They're quite interesting, and further solidify our viewpoints on certain players, ie. Oddo. I also think Pato would be dissapointed with his lack of assists. Bringing that into his game would make him deadly.

http://soccernet.espn.go.com/team/squad?id=103&cc=3436

I almost fainted looking at the number of assists by SuperPippo :- 3!

Originally Posted by Gabriel489

And an empty stadium during home games is great for the BRAND IMAGE.

From a business standpoint, the fact that Milan did not purchase any superstars or make any noise during the summer after the sale of Kaka would only means they are saving up the money for other use. IE to balance the book. There is really no sugarcoating the fact that Milan had gone really cheap over the past years.

On top of that, it is really hard to build itself to be a brand name if you don't have stars. Maybe Berlu still think Dinho and Beckham are superstars and a media magnets....but take a look at the latest Nike and Addias commercials for the past few years. How often do you see Dinho or Beckham anymore? Beside Kaka, name one player from the Milan set up who regularly appears in the big 4 of sports marketing-shoes, clothes, drinks and food? Then you look at teams like Arsenal(Cesc, Van Persie, Arshvin)-actually the whole team as they were in the Nike Commercial, Pool(Torres, Gerrard and Babel), ManU(Rooney, Rio and Giggs)-same as Arsenal), Barcelona(Messi, Iniesta, Ibra, Henry, Xavi), Real(Kaka, CR9, RVN, Raul), Chelsea(Terry, Ballack, Lampard), Juve(Canna, Trez, DP, Buffon), Inter(Sneijder), and Roma(Totti and De Rossi).

Marketing is a great way to earn extra money for the clubs by really not doing a great deal. Yet, Milan had done a horrible job at marketing themselves as a brand, which is something that really puzzles me.

Marketing is indeed a great way to raise the value of a team, but building a strong marketing department also requires money. We can all agree that a lot of the moves Berlusconi is making right now are very very short sighted and that is a good indication to me that he is trying to squeeze as much money as he can out of the team before selling it. We don't sign players because of that and we won't spend on building a competent club because of it.

If you really think about it, what is the difference between balancing the books or not for Milan? The team is Berlusconi's personal asset anyway and has no investors to answer to. So what if we make or lose a billion euros a year? It is just a number to Berlusconi and nothing else. The fact that we are working so hard to balance the books at all cost is just another way to make the club look pretty for potential buyers. Now, they can say that "look! we are the winningest team in the world, we have star players like Ronaldinho and Beckham, and we are one of the fewst teams in the world that is in great shape financially.

Originally Posted by Saliwonczyk

Have a look at these stats on our team... They're quite interesting, and further solidify our viewpoints on certain players, ie. Oddo. I also think Pato would be dissapointed with his lack of assists. Bringing that into his game would make him deadly.

http://soccernet.espn.go.com/team/squad?id=103&cc=3436

Very interesting never heard T.Silva called Thiaguinho before.

How typical of Pirlo.... 26 shots taken, 4 on target hahahaha. Seedorf also has 33 shots and 11 on target.

However I personally remember both Oddo and Abate making assists yet both of them have 0 assists. That means that the statistics are inaccurate.

Originally Posted by slifersd

No disrespect, GeoTav, but how do you know that the money doesn't go to Berlusconi? If he could pump his own money into the team to buy players, then he certainly has ways to take money out of the club when he sells players. That's the problem with privately held soccer teams, the owners can do whatever they want with the money.

The value of the club doesn't really decrease that rapidly. Look at the teams in the NBA, even the Clippers, a team that made the playoffs once in the last 20 years or something is still appreciating in value. The buyers are more interested in the brand name of the team rather than its players. So Berlusconi can actually sell every good player we have and still sell the team for a very high price, as long as he keeps up the brand image of the team. That also explains why players like Dida, Inzaghi, Pirlo, Seedorf and Kaladze are all kept around.

I make it simple and won't speak about notions of time (all I'm going to say doesn't happen in one year of course): the difference in football is that your "brand" will stay in Milan, in Serie A, etc ... and when a big club of a championship is in some kind of crisis, that can result by a decrease of the value of the championship (not about money but about sports there), and as a consequence, the best players will start to refuse to come in this country and the ones who are already there will start to leave it.

That makes your championship having less value (sports and money now), your club has not very good results because you sold all your best players: no good player, no good result, you can be AC Milan or Cagliari, it's the same, for TV (major source of revenue), you don't exist anymore.

If a franchise (is that the right name ?) in Los Angeles for example sells all their players and has very poor results (even if it's more complicated than that if I'm not wrong, I think the US system is weird), maybe this franchise will be bought then in another city and become the best team with the best players. That's possible in NBA, not in football.

I don't know if I'm clear (I have the feeling I am not lol).

About the first part of your post, AC Milan is "Societa per Azioni" or in French "Société par Actions" (I don't know the English equivalent, it's why I give both translations). I invite you to look at how this kind of firm works, it will be better than an explanation from myself because my English is going to be quickly limited and I'm going to spend too much time !!

Originally Posted by Gabriel489

And an empty stadium during home games is great for the BRAND IMAGE.

From a business standpoint, the fact that Milan did not purchase any superstars or make any noise during the summer after the sale of Kaka would only means they are saving up the money for other use. IE to balance the book. There is really no sugarcoating the fact that Milan had gone really cheap over the past years.

On top of that, it is really hard to build itself to be a brand name if you don't have stars. Maybe Berlu still think Dinho and Beckham are superstars and a media magnets....but take a look at the latest Nike and Addias commercials for the past few years. How often do you see Dinho or Beckham anymore? Beside Kaka, name one player from the Milan set up who regularly appears in the big 4 of sports marketing-shoes, clothes, drinks and food? Then you look at teams like Arsenal(Cesc, Van Persie, Arshvin)-actually the whole team as they were in the Nike Commercial, Pool(Torres, Gerrard and Babel), ManU(Rooney, Rio and Giggs)-same as Arsenal), Barcelona(Messi, Iniesta, Ibra, Henry, Xavi), Real(Kaka, CR9, RVN, Raul), Chelsea(Terry, Ballack, Lampard), Juve(Canna, Trez, DP, Buffon), Inter(Sneijder), and Roma(Totti and De Rossi).

Marketing is a great way to earn extra money for the clubs by really not doing a great deal. Yet, Milan had done a horrible job at marketing themselves as a brand, which is something that really puzzles me.

It looks like C.Ronaldo is the new Beckham since this year ...
Anyway, Beckham (more than Ronaldinho who is only a star in football) is one of the only football player who can also be called a "people", I mean a star that everyone is interested by. Maybe a bit less as the last few years, probably because of the fact that he left for the USA (he is an European star and was nothing or almost in the USA, just "Victoria's husband").

So even if these players aren't in sports brands adverts, they are still "big names" who allow you to sell and make some kind of noise.

About the balance of the books (but the wrong way is used, the best way should have been to invest in a winning team, buying the stadium and developping all the other economical parts of football), there are three possible reasons:
- selling soon the club
- being safe when a new economical crisis will happen (soon ...)
- being eligible for the European competitions (sooner or later)

I had another reason, but it was more a joke (it was about ethics, fairness) ...

Oh and to finish, a funny rumour from Calciomercato, again without any source, we would be more and more interested by Dzeko, but we could go for Fernando Torres ... which would mean paying something between 30 and 40M (probably closer of the 40M). Probably impossible, but they write it anyway ...

Originally Posted by GeoTav

I make it simple and won't speak about notions of time (all I'm going to say doesn't happen in one year of course): the difference in football is that your "brand" will stay in Milan, in Serie A, etc ... and when a big club of a championship is in some kind of crisis, that can result by a decrease of the value of the championship (not about money but about sports there), and as a consequence, the best players will start to refuse to come in this country and the ones who are already there will start to leave it.

That makes your championship having less value (sports and money now), your club has not very good results because you sold all your best players: no good player, no good result, you can be AC Milan or Cagliari, it's the same, for TV (major source of revenue), you don't exist anymore.

If a franchise (is that the right name ?) in Los Angeles for example sells all their players and has very poor results (even if it's more complicated than that if I'm not wrong, I think the US system is weird), maybe this franchise will be bought then in another city and become the best team with the best players. That's possible in NBA, not in football.

I don't know if I'm clear (I have the feeling I am not lol).

About the first part of your post, AC Milan is "Societa per Azioni" or in French "Société par Actions" (I don't know the English equivalent, it's why I give both translations). I invite you to look at how this kind of firm works, it will be better than an explanation from myself because my English is going to be quickly limited and I'm going to spend too much time !!

When I mentioned the notion of time, the point I wanted to make was that it takes time for a team to actually start depreciating in value even with poor results. Berlusconi isn't going to wait for 10 years and then sell the team, he's probably gonna sell it in a couple of years. In that time, as long as we don't relegate, our value really couldn't go down by much. As far as players not wanting to come and etc., those issues are easy to fix with a big paycheck. An ambitious owner with a deep pocket won't see that as an obstacle at all.

As far as American sports teams being different, you are quite right about that. That problem, however, is that it is actually easier to build a good team in European soccer than NBA. In the NBA, issues such as luxury tax, salary cap, free agency, draft, trades and other issues makes it very difficult for a team to actually become good even if they are willing to spend money. The LA Lakers might want to sign LeBron James this summer, but they won't be allowed to offer him a big contract even if they are willing to pay the luxury tax for him. Whereas in European soccer, as long as you want to spend, you can sign every single world class player there is.

The last part of the post....unfortunately I dont speak either French or Italian. The way I look at the strcture is that Milan is basically a subsidiary of FinInvest, or whatever that company's name is. As a subsidiary, Milan pretty much has to obey to whatever the demand its parental company has. That means, if FinInvest decides to pump 300 million euros into the team to sign players, then they can do that. If, on the other hand, FinInvest decides to pull out every single penny the team has, there is nothing Milan can really do about it other than handing the money over. I could be wrong, but that is how I believe the structure is set up.

Regards to THE BALANCING OF BOOK. Personally, I think it is the biggest crap of all. It is only an excuse for Berlu to pocket any sort of profits.

Beckham and Dinho might still make noise, but they often do that for the wrong reason nowadays. Thus, having those two in Milan might make Milan to appear in the paper more in the short term, but if Milan is winning and beating the competitions down, it will make more noise nomatter what. Or having someone like Kaka or CR9.

Having said all that, unless Berlu really wants to hold on to Milan till death, I really don't see Berlu splashing huge money into Milan anymore. As Milan-The Brand, is pretty much set(say 800MIL per se); of course, if the team do what Barcelona did, the value will certainly goes way up(say up 100MIL more). But Berlu is not a fool, and he knows he would need to spend quite heavily, more than 100MIL, into Milan in order for Milan to have a sure shot as being the TOP team in Europe. Thus, the math just does not add up. Thats why he is not doing it.
Another indication is the fact that Berlu is extending the soon to be retire players by one year or two years. We might scream at Berlu for doing that, but it does make sense in his book. As 1. He won't need to spend any money and resources in getting replacements. 2. Those players will be in very short term contracts, thus if there is a new owner, they don't need to sweat it about having to deal with all the long term deals the players are getting since they will spend money on their prefer players. 3. Lastly, that is the easiest way for Berlu to state that he got so many champions on his team....that he has 9 WC winners, #of CL winners.......

Originally Posted by slifersd

The last part of the post....unfortunately I dont speak either French or Italian. The way I look at the strcture is that Milan is basically a subsidiary of FinInvest, or whatever that company's name is. As a subsidiary, Milan pretty much has to obey to whatever the demand its parental company has. That means, if FinInvest decides to pump 300 million euros into the team to sign players, then they can do that. If, on the other hand, FinInvest decides to pull out every single penny the team has, there is nothing Milan can really do about it other than handing the money over. I could be wrong, but that is how I believe the structure is set up.

About the US system, I have a lot to learn, I just know it's franchises and that they can move, then about the draft, etc, I have no idea about how that works so thanks for the short explanation, I'll try to get a look at it later to understand it better ...

About Milan: litterally, "une société par actions" or "societa per azioni" is the kind of firms with shares (FR actions or ITA azioni = ENG shares). Fininvest, Berlusconi's holding, is the main shareholder with approximately 99,90% of the shares ...

There are 48M shares, each share costs about 50 eurocents ...

There are then other firms linked to Milan:
- Milan Entertainment SRL (firm in charge of the management of the AC Milan brand, value: approximately €180M)
- Milan Real Estate SPA (firm in charge of the management of headquarters and Milanello, nothing about sports, just money here)
- Fondazione Milan Onlus (charitable foundation)
- Consorzio San Siro (firm in charge of the management of San Siro/Giuseppe Meazza)
- ASanSiro (local development agency)

The first 3 are 100% owned by AC Milan.
The fourth is co-owned with Inter (50-50).
The fifth is co-owned with Inter (45%) and Fondazione ChiamaMilano (10%).