Winter Mercato 2011

speaking of Highlight reels on Youtube, check out Pirlo:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wozHjtfhBHg

Too bad I haven't seen him do anything in those videos in quite a loooooonnnngggg time....

However, being that some fans don't have time to sit down and watch all of the Russian League games to watch Honda or all of the Brazilian League games to watch Paulo Henrique (Ganso) or Jucilei or the Portuguese league to watch Coentrao... we have to go with stats, highlight reels, and a few games we see.


From that, I like Jucilei, Coentrao, Van der Wiel, & Ganso...I also like Matri as a 4th striker to replace Inzaghi, because he's big and strong, has proven he can score the past few years in Serie A with a not so great team.

Honda seems to be more of a SS and we have plenty of those...
Liverpool just put in a bid for him to play alongside Torres

Dev, Xavi is a great player, maybe he is not the greatest midfielder of all time, but he certainly is up ther. Btw, I really hate this greatest of all time title, as the games are too different between now and then, and it is quite foolish to compare players in different eras.

As for Barca being unstoppable, they r beatable, but the teams who beat them must have execute a perfect game along with Barca struggling a bit. Frankly, thats hard to come by.

Honda, well, he is an attk mid by nature but he is also very versatile. Personally, I would rather have Honda than Ganso as Honda got a more weel-rounded game than Ganso at this moment.

Originally Posted by Gabriel489

Dev, Xavi is a great player, maybe he is not the greatest midfielder of all time, but he certainly is up ther. Btw, I really hate this greatest of all time title, as the games are too different between now and then, and it is quite foolish to compare players in different eras.

As for Barca being unstoppable, they r beatable, but the teams who beat them must have execute a perfect game along with Barca struggling a bit. Frankly, thats hard to come by.

Honda, well, he is an attk mid by nature but he is also very versatile. Personally, I would rather have Honda than Ganso as Honda got a more weel-rounded game than Ganso at this moment.

I agree with you Gabriel on a lot... I also hate the Greatest of All Time Debate. I experience it often in Tennis, as I am very involved in the Tennis World, and comparing guys like Laver to Federer Sampras, Agassi is impossible.

In Football, you also cannot compare guys like Maradona to Messi, Van Basten to Ibra, or today's Barca team with teams of the 50s, 60s, 70s, or 80s.

This Barcelona team is the best team I've ever seen but I have admittedly not watched football more than a decade. They dominate the game with skillfull players who play as a team, and literally keep the ball away from you for most of the game. Villa, Messi, Xavi, Iniesta, Alves (and thru the past few years, Ibra, Ronaldinho, Yaya Toure, Eto'o). They go for incredibly skillful players and they play beautiful football, and simply enough, they WIN.

Lastly, I think Milan are 2-3 players from being one of the best teams in the World. We are starting to have more depth, and now with a little more quality in ACM, FB, and CM, we can really expect big things from this team (Multiple Scudetti, and a Champions League)

Honda, is an excellent player, but I'm not sure how he'd fit in. He works very hard, and is very skillfull, great at free kicks, and incredibly quick. He's a lefty, and he's also Japanese which would mean a huge opening to the Asian market and a lot of money that comes with that. However, is Ganso the more fluid, easily adaptable player into Serie A? very possible.

Update on Jucilei(reliable):

- The player said he sit down with 7 Clubs(no names mentioned), but that no one made a real offer. Just talked to him to know his situation. Said no teams offered what Corinthians was asking...

- Corinthians was asking for 10 millions(euros). Corinthians never ask too much for a player(unlike Santos, Inter, S. Paulo..)and imo 10M is no brainer.

- Corinthians President said Fiorentina offered 8 millions and it was rejected.

- Jucilei agent confirmed he only knows about Fiorentina offer. The only real offer until today.

- People inside Corinthains "feels" Juve will be the next one to make a real offer. Milan wasn´t mentioned, but they said more offers will come after Sunday, last Corinthians game in Brasileirão(Corinthians is second, one point behind Fluminense and fighting for the title).

After Sunday, more news will come out and I will keep you guys informed...

imo .. it looks like if we do the right moves we could be one of the best clubs in europe.. look. on footballpress.net i read that we want to sign fabiano again and its a very big possibility.. not to be unrealistic but i think we should offer 12mill and it should be a respected offer which both clubs can agree on.. secondly elano&galatasary of struck somewhat of a deal to transfer him to santos.. that opens up the door to a ganso-milan transfer very possible.. i dont think neymar will go anywhere until summer or next jan, hes too young imo. and lastly all this stuff about thiago silva coming out and saying we need tos ign david luiz, david luiz this david luiz that i think we will end up signing him.. why wouldnt galliani &co listen to one of our best players? anyhow

david luiz,ganso,fabiano in winter.. get rid of r80 we would have an almost completely brazilian team though lol.. to keep all our top class players in the line up we could possibly give ganso a more midfield roll rather then ACM, possibly cm? but im sure he lacks the defensive qualities.. with fabiano there a good goal scorer, imo better then matri we will have a wc squad.. david luiz imo is a better goal then coentrao bcuz hes versatile and atm we need a good cb to fill in for nesta and a full back.. he can play both roles.. when nestas on his game we put david luiz at rb or lb and when hes injured etc we put luiz at cb. our second first choice fullback should aslo be abate..

---------amelia----------
--Abate-nesta-silva--luiz-
---flamini--ganso--boateng-
---------robinho-----------
----ibra----------pato-----

subs;abbiati,fabiano,yepes,,gattuso,pirlo,ambro etc we have so much options with this even seedorf etc..
the only not so reliable thing in this line up is ganso at cm becuz it might leave a defensive gap in the midfield.. but goals are a guarentee

Originally Posted by Brasileiro

Update on Jucilei(reliable):

- The player said he sit down with 7 Clubs(no names mentioned), but that no one made a real offer. Just talked to him to know his situation. Said no teams offered what Corinthians was asking...

- Corinthians was asking for 10 millions(euros). Corinthians never ask too much for a player(unlike Santos, Inter, S. Paulo..)and imo 10M is no brainer.

- Corinthians President said Fiorentina offered 8 millions and it was rejected.

- Jucilei agent confirmed he only knows about Fiorentina offer. The only real offer until today.

- People inside Corinthains "feels" Juve will be the next one to make a real offer. Milan wasn´t mentioned, but they said more offers will come after Sunday, last Corinthians game in Brasileirão(Corinthians is second, one point behind Fluminense and fighting for the title).

After Sunday, more news will come out and I will keep you guys informed...

Would love Jucelei from what I've seen and what you said. But I can't help but feel though that Ganso and Giuliano type players would be more needed at the moment.

From the games I saw Ganso seems pretty amazing, and looks like a unique talent, but of the two I feel like Giuliano would fit in best at the moment. He seems like more of a Kaká type player, and thus I think he would fit into a Ibrahimovic team more. Since I feel Ibrahimovic is best playing in teams that defend deep, don't keep a to much possession etc. This way he can be used to play the ball up on (which he's excellent at cause the ball sticks), and he gets more influence this way (As compared to having to stay in the box).

Btw, whats the deal with Giuliano. I saw him earlier in Libertadores, and he was amazing + his team won, yet I don't hear anything about him over here. I hear loads about Ganso and Neymar though, and even Jucilei is starting to create a bit of a buzz. Just seems weird to me that a player leading his team to the Libertadores doesn't get more buzz.

Originally Posted by Nalx

Imagine Barca against Milan of the late 80s. Rijkaard+Ancelotti against Xavi+Iniesta, Marco+Gullit against their defense, or Villa+Messi+Pedro against our legendary back four. Must be one hell of a game.

I think Milan of 89-90 would win.

Originally Posted by Arildonardo

I'd bet on Milan. Best team ever!

Originally Posted by Arildonardo

And by even stronger you mean buying star-players for another billion?

That too.

Originally Posted by Gabriel489

Dev, Xavi is a great player, maybe he is not the greatest midfielder of all time, but he certainly is up ther. Btw, I really hate this greatest of all time title, as the games are too different between now and then, and it is quite foolish to compare players in different eras.

As for Barca being unstoppable, they r beatable, but the teams who beat them must have execute a perfect game along with Barca struggling a bit. Frankly, thats hard to come by.

Honda, well, he is an attk mid by nature but he is also very versatile. Personally, I would rather have Honda than Ganso as Honda got a more weel-rounded game than Ganso at this moment.

greatest of all time title certainly not aplicable anymore, i agree with reasons mentioned here, But one thing is for sure that Barca is one different level to others, Jose will remember forever the humiliation on El-Classico night

I would like to think Milan of 89-90 will beat Barca today but it is something that we will never know.

I think that loss is probably JM greatest defeat and quite frankly, what impresses me the most of how the Real board and fans did not start calling for his head. I am pretty sure if that it was any other coach, he would probably be fired by now. Or the board and the fans also saw how great Barcelona is.

Originally Posted by mzk57

Xavi --- A little man with very less physical strength against huge defensive guys most of the time & comes on top 95% of times

He had more influence in winning the world cup compared to Zidane in 1998. Has won Euros Championships, several La Liga & other competitions & if it wasn't for Jose Mourinho, he would have had 3 UCL medals by now. Now all these achievements are good enough to declare him one of the greatest of all time. Okay i don't agree him being the best CM of all time, but he surely has already surpassed Zidane & Pirlo. Maybe Platini is better, but who else? Maradona, Cryuff, Baggio & Figo were different type of players, L.Mattaus, Davids & Deschamp were defensive beasts, so Xavi has not many players as direct rivals.

By the way, who do you think is best CM of all time?

Xavi has never, and never will be asked to dominate a midfield on his own. He has always played with guys like Iniesta, Toure, Keita, Busquets and Alonso, all of which help him a great deal on the pitch.

To compare Xavi to Zidane is a null argument. Zidane in '98 carried the French attack himself as back then the attack was very weak compared to the rest of the squad. In 2006, Zidane again essentially carried the French team to the World cup final, as the whole team was poor. Xavi, whilst world class and undeniably influential, has never had that much responsibility on his shoulders. Since his status in the game grew, he has always played with a lot of quality players. In Barca, he's always had Dinho, Villa, Messi, Iniesta, Toure, Busquets, Henry, Ibra etch around him. In Spain, Villa, Torres, Iniesta, Alonso, Fabregas (sometimes) etc.

Xavi has definitely not surpassed Zidane and Pirlo imo. I've already debated about Pirlo and Xavi elsewhere on the forum, and Zidane I personally think was superior in pretty much every aspect. Don't get me wrong, Xavi is a brilliant player and worthy of being called an all time great, but not THE greatest.

I don't have a preference for the greatest CM ever, individuals are too unique and varied to be labelled as such.

Originally Posted by Gabriel489

Dev, Xavi is a great player, maybe he is not the greatest midfielder of all time, but he certainly is up ther. Btw, I really hate this greatest of all time title, as the games are too different between now and then, and it is quite foolish to compare players in different eras.

As for Barca being unstoppable, they r beatable, but the teams who beat them must have execute a perfect game along with Barca struggling a bit. Frankly, thats hard to come by.

Honda, well, he is an attk mid by nature but he is also very versatile. Personally, I would rather have Honda than Ganso as Honda got a more weel-rounded game than Ganso at this moment.

Most of my points on Xavi are covered above. I don't really disagree with you.

Originally Posted by ACMILAN1983

Xavi has never, and never will be asked to dominate a midfield on his own. He has always played with guys like Iniesta, Toure, Keita, Busquets and Alonso, all of which help him a great deal on the pitch.

To compare Xavi to Zidane is a null argument. Zidane in '98 carried the French attack himself as back then the attack was very weak compared to the rest of the squad. In 2006, Zidane again essentially carried the French team to the World cup final, as the whole team was poor. Xavi, whilst world class and undeniably influential, has never had that much responsibility on his shoulders. Since his status in the game grew, he has always played with a lot of quality players. In Barca, he's always had Dinho, Villa, Messi, Iniesta, Toure, Busquets, Henry, Ibra etch around him. In Spain, Villa, Torres, Iniesta, Alonso, Fabregas (sometimes) etc.

Xavi has definitely not surpassed Zidane and Pirlo imo. I've already debated about Pirlo and Xavi elsewhere on the forum, and Zidane I personally think was superior in pretty much every aspect. Don't get me wrong, Xavi is a brilliant player and worthy of being called an all time great, but not THE greatest.

Don't get me wrong, I respect you opinion, but how can you say Zidane is better than Xavi? If Xavi has world class players around him, then so did Zidane. Deschamp, Vieira, Makelele will always be remembered as among the best DM of the last 2 decades. Then there were the likes of Petit, Pires, & Ribbery. And of-course the partnership of Henry & Trezeguet upfront. You can't ask for more than that. I personally think Zidane is over ratted to some extent with all due respect to him. Xavi is slightly better than him & more importantly his consistency is amazing. I used to see Real Madrid matches almost every weekend when they had Figo, Zidane, Ronaldo etc & honestly, Zidane's last 3 years at Real (out of 5) produced nothing special. He was just hot & cold, hit & miss.

As for Pirlo, it simple, both are 30 years old & look at the difference between them. Pirlo's period was 2002-07, its over now. Pirlo is hardly doing any good these days & Xavi is producing match winning battles on every weekend. You see how simply a clown like Par Ji Sung out played Pirlo last year. It was embarrassing to see. Have you ever seen any one man marking Xavi completely out of the game? Be honest & I am sure your answer will be 'no'. On the other hand, all the opposition coach has to do is to man-mark Pirlo & it then he looks like a lost kid on the field. A true great midfielder shouldn't be man marked that easily & successfully out of the game.

My point is simple, if the list of best midfielders is made, Xavi should be at least above Zidane & Pirlo

I just want to say two things.

1. Xavi always had his twin brother Iniesta on the field to help him, that's why it is impossible to mark him out of the game. When Pirlo had Seedorf at left midfield, he also was superior to everybody (2002-2007)

2. Galliani is very quiet lately, I think he's working on bringing Cassano. He's free, and you know Galliani's got a hard on for free players.

Galliani WAS quiet until today ...

He said if Manchester City wants to sell Balotelli, Milan will be for sure the first club to try to get him and that if someday, Ibra and Balotelli play again together, it will be in Milan.

Several rumours nowadays:
- from Spain, Milan deals with Madrid to get Kaka' back
- from Spain, Luis Fabiano is again one of our targets (will it never end ?)
- from Portugal, David Luiz could really leave Benfica this winter and we're the favourites to get him
- from France, we sent a scout to watch Gameiro from Lorient
- from Italy, we'll probably try to get Cassano this winter
- from Belgium, Lukaku is our target for this summer

What we can learn from all these rumours is that we're heavily linked with attacking players (without forgetting we're regularly linked with Ganso too) ... does that mean we'll get one or more defenders ?

Other rumours of the last few days/weeks:
- a club is interested by Oddo (Marseille because Azpilicueta is injured I think, and they want an experienced player who is not expensive or even free)
- I read that if Pirlo doesn't renew his contract with us, he will go in Barcelona (which would allow all of you to compare him to Xavi ...)

About Xavi, Pirlo, Zidane, and co ... Firstly, how can Zidane be compared to these players ? They don't/didn't play in the same position on the field, they didn't have the same role. Zidane was an AM. Pirlo and Xavi are not AMs (Pirlo was but never in Milan, for Xavi, I don't know), they are CMs and for Pirlo, he even has to play so much in the back that he looks like a DM. Xavi has Iniesta on his left, Messi in front of him on the right, and Villa who moves a lot, he never makes long passes, only short passes to these players who always move and give him solutions, and I don't mention Alves coming from behind on his right too.
Pirlo in the last few years (this year, we don't know, he hasn't played since the team started to be solid) ? If we take the example of last year, he had Ambrosini who was defensive minded on his left/right, Seedorf that everybody tended to call Slowdorf on this forum (that means what that means), and our formation forced him to only try long passes towards Pato who never came back to help the midfielders last year (or Huntelaar with Pato injured) on the right, Borriello in the centre or Ronaldinho on the left. Put Xavi in the Milan of 2007-2010 and everybody would have said that he was finished ...

With the current Milan, I predict that Pirlo will slowly turn to be great again (I don't know if you noticed that in Italy, he was always good, even when he was really bad with us).

Agree 100% to ACMILAN1983............ZIDANE to be compared with XAVI is rubbish......he literally single handedly carried france to the ultimate trophy....to me he wil be in the all time world team...!!!!

Originally Posted by ACMILAN1983

Xavi has never, and never will be asked to dominate a midfield on his own. He has always played with guys like Iniesta, Toure, Keita, Busquets and Alonso, all of which help him a great deal on the pitch.

To compare Xavi to Zidane is a null argument. Zidane in '98 carried the French attack himself as back then the attack was very weak compared to the rest of the squad. In 2006, Zidane again essentially carried the French team to the World cup final, as the whole team was poor. Xavi, whilst world class and undeniably influential, has never had that much responsibility on his shoulders. Since his status in the game grew, he has always played with a lot of quality players. In Barca, he's always had Dinho, Villa, Messi, Iniesta, Toure, Busquets, Henry, Ibra etch around him. In Spain, Villa, Torres, Iniesta, Alonso, Fabregas (sometimes) etc.

Xavi has definitely not surpassed Zidane and Pirlo imo. I've already debated about Pirlo and Xavi elsewhere on the forum, and Zidane I personally think was superior in pretty much every aspect. Don't get me wrong, Xavi is a brilliant player and worthy of being called an all time great, but not THE greatest.

I don't have a preference for the greatest CM ever, individuals are too unique and varied to be labelled as such.



Most of my points on Xavi are covered above. I don't really disagree with you.

todays rumours........roque santa cruz for the fourth striker spot ---- wont be too bad

david luiz link is getting stronger------hope rui costa & galliani sit together to settle it out...god he will be a great signing

cassano, balotelli, fabiano -------------to me except for cassano (who is free), all others are a no go....fabiano isnt cheap, balo will disrupt the milan family environment(also not cheap as well)...i guess santa cruz will be good...he has got good experience & is a good striker with an eye for goal if in a good team...

adding d.luiz, santa cruz, pastore/kaka & poli will complete our squad...........i wud rather sell pirlo, seedorf, r80, janku, oddo, papasthapoulos, onyewu


------------------Ibra/Robinho--------------Pato/Santa Cruz-------

------------------------------Kaka----------------------


-------Flamini---------------Pastore----------Ambro----


D.Luiz--------------Silva--------------Nesta-------Abate


----------------------------Amelia-----------------------