Banter 2009/2010

I'm sorry, the fact that B&G made mistakes as some sort of proof of their stupidity or ineptitude is like saying the fact that players misplace passes or miss shots on goal are proof that they are crap players. Mistakes happen, and it is not just with our club.

Inter has been a laughing stock, no one respects their Serie A wins as each year they have had countless penalties, questionable ref decisions, and just a terrible way of winning. Combined with their poor European showing, they are a joke, pure and simple.

The amount of money that Inter has wasted is incredible, honestly, incredible. So if anyone wants to compare our practices with Inter, go ahead, because that was the team that bought Robbie Keane, sold Cannavaro, Grosso, and gave us Seedorf and Pirlo for COCO. Do they spend a lot of money? Yeah. I'd like to have that money, but I'd rather win with dignity, than take 20 years to win a Scudetto (when was the last time they won the CL? Oh, that's right).

As far as Moggi goes, this was the guy who brought in Legrottaglie, Zebina, Balzaretti, Giannichedda... But those are success stories in comparison to the Nicola Amoruso, Oliver Kapo, Stephen Appiah transfers, while he was able to ruin Manuele Blasi, Marco Di Vaio, and of course there are the Miccoli and Ruben Oliveira. If you think Gourcuff is bad, what do you say about Thierry Henry? What about letting Christian Vieri go after one season? There are many others, but the lack of success in Europe, like others have said, again, speaks volumes of the sort of management style Moggi had, which is why he is banned from Calcio.

The idea that Moggi brought in no bodies and made them into superstars, like Trezeguet, is not right. Trez had won World Cup 1998 and Euro 2000 with France before coming to Juve, and the fact that he is banned from football means that his good transfer work while not completely overshadowed by the ban, but, much of it must be scrutinized by this fact.

I am with brk who says that we should separate Galliani and Berlusconi. I think Galli can do a lot better then he does if Berlu gave him the sort of funds that Juve or Inter have currently. Furthermore, for every Emerson, Oliveira, or Gila, this is the Galliani who brought in Thiago Silva, Pato, Kaka (for 8.5 million, I believe?), who brought in Pirlo and Seedorf, Gattuso, Rui Costa, and so on and so forth.

Think about it this way. Perhaps Gourcuff is our Henry equivalent. Juventus paid 10.5 million for Henry, sold him for 10 million. We bought Gourcuff for 3.5 and sold him for 15. Both are unfortunate, as they are fantastic players. However, when Milan makes a mistake, we don't take such a massive hit. Sure, we might have taken a hit with Ricardo Oliveira (who's kidnapping saga I think was the reason he failed, more than footballing reasons) but look at what Moggi did with Vieira. They sold him to Inter for 9 million after buying him for 20. It seems unclear, but I think Vieira and Zlatan went to Inter for a combined 24 million, though the 24 might be for Zlatan alone, but if the 24 million is for the combined pair, that is a 12 million loss just there.

I don't think our management is doing what we deserve as fans or as fans of a club like AC Milan. However, things are going well, and looking over at the way things are going with money-spending Juventus (they just lost to Chievo, and we just beat them 3-0) I think that whatever Galliani is doing, he's doing it right, and frankly, the results speak for themselves.

Again, I am afraid of what happens in the next few years. What happens when Pirlo, Seedorf, and co. can no longer carry on? I think that is Galliani's next big test, what he does with Milan in the next two years. However, with Leonardo at the helm, Ronaldinho on form, and Milan youth products taking starting roles in our eleven (while winning), it seems that we might have reason to be optimistic in the future.

Good points by Samaldinho about club directors. A good GM shouldn't just be judged on the fact that he has made some mistakes, as that's just part of the job. The issue, however, is the success rate of his signings. Here in Milan, at least over the last decade or so, our success rate with signings is incredibly low. Honestly, the only two signings that seemed to worked out well over the last five years are Pato and Silva. Sure, mistakes happen, but this kind of failure rate is much too high, especially for a club that doens't even sign that many players. What's worse about what Galliani has been doing is that the terrible players he signed are expected to be major contributors. Oddo, Ronaldo, Gilardino, Huntelaar and Gourcuff were supposed to be our starters; meanwhile Sendeores, Bonera, Favalli and Emerson were going to be our primary rotation players. When all of those signings fail, our squad becomes paper thin. The lack of competition then leads to starters losing motivation, as their spot is secure no matter how badly they play. And that, essentially, was the issue for this team before Leo took over.

Galliani isn't necessarily the worst GM in history, but he is certainly not one of the greatest. The fact of matter is, all soccer clubs in the world nowadays are more concerned about balancing their books (except for Real Madrid, of course). With the lack of resources that we have here in Milan, we need someone who doesn't waste money on lackluster signings. If Galliani's success rate doesn't improve, then he is simply not the right guy for the job. Berlusconi is a piece of garbage indeed, but Galliani certainly didn't help this team get better with his actions.

i agree 100% with you dude and i have to add smth here take a look on premier league liverpool is going to sell everything still trying to pay for tores,man utd is going to chinese company after 2-3 years full of expensive tranfers, abramovic stopped paying for everyone can play football 5-15 millions
do you remember milan at 2000-2002 changing players and squad every 6 months terible years for milan
we need to invest to the future and we are in very good way, our defence till summer will be brand new with very goof players,if palochi come back we are complete in attack too (if dzeko comes it will not be a problem of course)
i think the only prob we have is on the middle we made big mistake with gorcuff
but we have to look forward, di gennaro is a very good player for the future in creative role but i think we need 2 players one like de rossi ,gerrard (i mean same style of player) and a creative midfielder who can pass score drible etc another one ronaldinhio i think cassano is the best for this,krasic is good too
maybe 30-35 milions need to be spend on midfielders its not that much imo if these tranfers give us solutions for 2-3 years
sorry for my poor english guys !

Don't worry about your English rossomero, I think you make an important point. I think of all the positions, my concern is for our midfield.

While there are younger players in our defense, like Antonini, Thiago Silva, Abate (who shouldn't be there, but is doing a great job), and it seems that Bonera, if fit, can be an important rotation player, and I wouldn't be surprised to see Astori return, as well. Sure, the defense definitely needs some work, but our midfield, is far less assured.

There is only Flamini in our midfield that can be seen as a future element of the team. We don't even have a faint hope of a player coming through our youth ranks for our midfielder. Sure, we have Verdi, but he's a winger, De Vito is a fullback, only Abate is the only midfielder who seems to be younger and in the mix for the midfield.

It seems that is the place where we're going to need a serious overhaul, and I'm concerned about how we can do that. I don't hear too many rumors about players coming in for our midfield positions, when clearly, in two years, Ambro, Gattuso, Pirlo, and Seedorf will not be able to do what they are doing now.

The only young acquisition we have bought is Hottor, and he's 16. All the young players we've bought seem to be attacking players. It is odd and I hope that Galliani has something up his sleeve.

However, slifersd, I don't think Galliani's failure rate is as nearly as high as you are making it out to be. It's not just Pato, and Silva. There is Kaka, who is a shining example of one of the success stories of Milan's transfer policy. There is also the useful players who came to Milan, for a brief time, but contributed in important ways: Dario Simic, Pancaro, Vogel, Dhorosoo to name a few.

Cafu came to Milan for free. Jaap Stam was a fantastic addition. Ronaldo played very well for Milan, if Ronaldo didn't come to Milan that second half of 2006-07, I think Milan couldn't have won the CL.

Senderos was never meant to be an important player for Milan, Emerson played little for Milan, and last year Favalli was a rock alongside Maldini.

I don't think Galli can be faulted for Oddo's sudden drop of form, when he came he was so important to Milan and really gave our RB spot new life. Gilardino was supposed to be guaranteed goals, he outshone Adriano at Parma for God's sake, and Huntelaar has yet to have enough chances to be a "classic" failure while Gourcuff, as far as I'm concerned, is just a coward because he prefers being the big fish in a small pond.

I mean, Juventus' entire transfer campaigns for the last, let's say 4 years, have been incredibly poor. Tiago, Poulsen, Grosso (who is so different in club games), Cannavaro (second time), Amauri, Knežević, Almiron, and Felipe Melo just to name a few.

In fact, Juventus transfers have been particularly poor, especially when you look at the figures involved: Tiago (13 million), Almiron (9 million), Poulsen (9.75), Grosso (2+1 million), Amauri (22.8), Melo (20-25 million). Those are all within the last four years.

I was so angry that Sheva left, and I was even angrier that Kaka left. However, did you watch Sheva at Chelsea? Have you seen Kaka at Real? If you ask me, it seems that we did a good bit of business, as both of them have been exceptionally poor at their new clubs.

I don't think that Galliani is infallible, but I do think that he's one of the best out there. I really do. I mean, how's Arsenal's policy worked out for them? Man Utd's spending wildly is putting them in a mess, would you have paid 30.75 million for Berbatov? 17 million for Nani? How about 17 million for Owen Hargreaves, with 37 appearances in three seasons? Sure he was injured, but if Galliani is responsible for that, Man Utd is screwed.

There are loads of transfer failures everywhere. Man Utd is actually pretty poor with their transfer record. Kleberson, Bellion, Djemba-Djemba, Gerrard Pique, Giuseppe Rossi, and you could of course add Heinze, Alan Smith, Richardson, among others.

Chelsea is probably one of the worst offenders, so we don't even need to go there. Real is another gem of a club, and Arsenal has literally nothing to show for their transfer policies but several "all most" seasons.

Again, I don't think Galliani is perfect, but I would MUCH rather have him that the quacks at Inter, Arsenal, Man Utd, or Juve. And sure, we probably have very little money to spend now, quite frankly, when it comes to getting players to come to Milan for cheap, it seems Galliani is the best at it. Flamini, Cafu, Beckham (seriously lowering his wages to come), among others have picked Milan, and it seems Galliani has been critical to that.

I think when it comes to success, the success of individual players can be less important than the success of the team that the GM serves. I think the last decade has been pretty good to us, and it seems that after the frustration of the last two seasons, it seems that we are on the up. We are entertaining, scoring at will, and incorporating Milan youth products into our starting lineup. I guess he has to be doing something right?

The funny thing is that, a few years back, some here thought Tiago is the next big thing and cursed Galli for not making the deal happens, same goes for Berba and Amauri. ANd the reason why those three did not come to MIlan was not b/c Galli and Berlu thinks they sucks but they were cheap and thinks Milan is full of Champions.
Point is that it is so easy to pick out mistakes on transfers when they did not work out.
Like we can all name the successes and failures of each GM all day long since we can all look back now and see how each of those players perform with how much money the GM spent on them. But what we really should look at is the manner in which the players were signed by the club. For example, at least according to rumors at that time, Juve, ManU and Milan were all serious about signing Gila. Ofcourse at the end Gila signed with Milan and it turned out to be a bust... but if Gila signed with ManU or Juve, and is a bust, then should we sign praise to Galli/Berlu for making a smart choice by not overpaying for Gila's service? Or he might had flourished under the Juve or ManU system, then should we say that they sucks b/c they should have signed Gila for 25Mil and got a great striker instead of being cheap and led him go to Juve and ManU-kind of like what some of us reaction with Torres to Pool.

IMO, what made Galli worse than Moggi and some of the other GMs is not mainly b/c he seems like he is clueless. It had more to do with signing aging players with long contracts. Dida and Emerson were examples. Paying Dida 4 mil a year after tax might not be that bad as he did came off a great season before signing that contract, but making that a 4 or 5 years deal for a 33 yrs old keeper is stupid. Esp if you have someone like Abbiatti under contract too. Emerson was a washed up players, but paying 5 mil transfer fee and a contract of 3 mil after tax is plain stupid. I would not say Favalli was a mistake as he pretty much came in as someone who adds depth-which he does and is not hurting the payroll with his wages.
TO some extend I believe that they should have let Cap retire after the CL win in 2007.

The diff between Henry and Gourcuff is that Henry was still prospect when Juve sold him to Arsenal, where as Gourcuff is a star and still under Milan's contract but Galli failed to keep him. I think Veira is the Henry of Milan.

Galliani should be responsible for the failures such as Ronaldo and Oddo because their sudden drop in form and injury concerns should be accounted for before the signing took place. We cant expect players in their 30s to consistently maintain a high level of play or stay away from injuries. The mere fact that Galliani chose those two guys instead of the other options proves to me that he is a very poor planner. We spent a decent amount of cash on those two only to have those two positions covered for half a season. What we should have done was to spend the money on players who were going to last a lot longer, that means, players way below 30 years of age.

I agree with u that Galliani did a pretty nice job in bringing in a lot of those squad players. But, even the last one of those came a few years ago. He hasn't brought in anyone meaningful to fill out our bench since that time. And that's why we have no bench to use when our starters get hurt or need to be rested.

Juventus certainly has been horrible in the market the last few years, but that's also because they don't have Moggi at the top. Had Moggi been there, things would've very different for sure. Moggi, as a manager understood the value of players. He was willing to fork out serious cash for players that are worth it but wouldn't spend one penny on scrubs that can't cut it. And that, in essence, is exactly so many transfers you listed turned out to be failures for many teams. Clubs spent on players who have so called "potential" but still carried a cheaper price tag compared to actual star players. And what ended up happened was that those players never deliverd on their promise and the club had to spend again for another guy. That phenomenom, by the way, sounds awfully familiar to what we have been doing over the last few years as well.

Shevchenko and Kaka certianly haven't been their dominating self since they left milan, but you also have to look at things from another direction. Is Milan better since they left? Our squad went from the best in the world to second rated in Serie A with the departure of those two. Just because they didn't play as well as their milan days doesn't mean we actually made the smart decisions to sell them. Not to mention, we pretty much wasted the money we got from selling them on useless signings, bogus financial problems and tarnished our image as a ambitious club along the way.

The job of a GM is to make the team better, by choosing the right players and coaches. It is the coach's job to make them perform on the field. As a GM, Galliani did a great job choosing Leonardo as our coach, but has been atrocious in building the team. Just look at our squad, the quality of the team has been on decline for years now and that trend doesn't seem like it's stopping anytime soon. Just because we are delivering nice results doesn't mean Galliani did all of his jobs right.

I agree with you, Samaldinho, in that Galliani has done some nice things over the years for us. Maybe I didn't give him enough credit. But to say that he is one of the best in the business based on what he has done the last 5, 6 years is just not a realistic statement for me.

Originally Posted by Gabriel489

I do give Moggi for eyeing talents as he has pretty much done so over the past 20 years.
Where as Galli/Berlu only got great talents since Leo became their scout. To me the only non-Brazilian who came to Milan and made it big is Pirlo and Sheva. While Pirlo was known as the most talented U21 since Baggio but just lacks a good team and Sheva was really the next big thing in European Soccer. So those two were really a no brainer.

Eyeing talents? if i can recall, the only player that come to Juve and made it big (like Pirlo and Sheva) is Zidane...and he is no brainer too because he is part of a strong Bordeaux team that was came runners up in UEFA cup in 95.Plus he was already an established France international at that time(Replacing Cantona if i'm not mistaken)

Originally Posted by Gabriel489

The diff between Henry and Gourcuff is that Henry was still prospect when Juve sold him to Arsenal, where as Gourcuff is a star and still under Milan's contract but Galli failed to keep him. I think Veira is the Henry of Milan.

Henry (and Trez) in Monaco were already excellent players, young but almost established players ...

Don't forget he was the leader, alongside Trezeguet, of the attack of Monaco, French champion, he was already a winner of the World Cup ... he already scored 7 goals in 9 games in CL the year before coming to Juventus ...

Calling him a "prospect" is forgetting history.

Oh and he stayed only 7 months in Juventus (so they even didn't give him his chance) and left because of "the lack of respect of Luciano Moggi towards him and the players" ...

I don't know what to make of it, guys, but I've read on a couple of local - Sarajevo based forums from the people who claim to know Dzeko personally, that the deal with Milan is already done, and will be announced in the summer. And those people are not Milan fans.

The deal is already done between Milan and Dzeko or between Milan and Wolfsburg?

I guess both?

this is what one of the posts says:

"(speaking to another Milan fan, who expressed his wish that Dzeko signs with us) "Let me make you happy, the deal is done. I just don't know when the official announcment will be made".

This member said earlier that he know Dzeko personally, which is not unusual, Dzeko is not acting like a celebrity when he comes to his hometown. He goes out to bars like any regular guy, without bodyguards or press crews all over the place.

Originally Posted by Stitch

I don't know what to make of it, guys, but I've read on a couple of local - Sarajevo based forums from the people who claim to know Dzeko personally, that the deal with Milan is already done, and will be announced in the summer. And those people are not Milan fans.

I'm not trying to disrespect you buddy, but I've read about this for the umpteenth time here. Someone who knows Dzeko personally, or someone who sees with his very eyes Galliani in Sarajevo, blah blah blah. I wouldn't be surprised if I read "I slept with Dzeko last night and he said he's going to be Milan player by next morning. So remember, you hear it here first!"

Personally I'd love to have Edin in Milan, but please stop this nonsense. Again I apologize if I may hurt your or someone else's feeling

How much did we pay to get Dzeko?

Now the big question is how can we play Borriello and Dzeko at the same time.

NOt again with this Dzeko thing. Not going to comment on it till, Dzeko flies to Milan, wear the RED AND BLACK jersey, smiling at camera at a press conf stating it is his dream to play for AC MILAN.

Originally Posted by Nalx

I'm not trying to disrespect you buddy, but I've read about this for the umpteenth time here. Someone who knows Dzeko personally, or someone who sees with his very eyes Galliani in Sarajevo, blah blah blah. I wouldn't be surprised if I read "I slept with Dzeko last night and he said he's going to be Milan player by next morning. So remember, you hear it here first!"

Personally I'd love to have Edin in Milan, but please stop this nonsense. Again I apologize if I may hurt your or someone else's feeling

no offense taken they are not my buddies, they are just people who are members of the same forums as I am. I said "i don't know what to make of it", so I am not claiming that their statements are true...the only reason I posted this is because I found it unusual for two persons posting something similar in the same day.
Everybody here knows I want Dzeko to come, maybe I'm just being unrealistic, and grabbing for every info I can get.