AC Milan Thread - Montella Replaced By Gattuso

[ScoRoss]

1 hour ago, SirBalon said:

It's got to do with everything because it's the market. That market influences every single league as it does in general means. 

You missed the first point. Selling Salah was good for Roma and signing Bonucci is bad for Milan?

[SirBalon]

38 minutes ago, ScoRoss said:

You missed the first point. Selling Salah was good for Roma and signing Bonucci is bad for Milan?

Selling Salah was excellent for Roma because he isn't all that much and Roma got top dollar for him. That let Monchi sign the players that he thinks are necessary... players as in plural.

This is the difference between someone working for a club that is an expert in analysing what's needed and the simple thing of the lottery winner that becomes all crass and buys everything that's meant to be good. 

[Dalmore]

Roma will no longer be higher than Milan on the ranking tables. Things were re-established this summer as Milan proved they're out of their (economical) crysis.

And Salah is a big loss for Roma. He was doing all the job in front. He gave the most assists in Serie A and Dzeko was the top scorer because of him.

[ScoRoss]

14 hours ago, SirBalon said:

Selling Salah was excellent for Roma because he isn't all that much and Roma got top dollar for him. That let Monchi sign the players that he thinks are necessary... players as in plural.

This is the difference between someone working for a club that is an expert in analysing what's needed and the simple thing of the lottery winner that becomes all crass and buys everything that's meant to be good. 

You don't think that Milan are capable of identifying good players? 

Kessie, Conti, Bonucci... All proven Serie A players. 

[SirBalon]

17 minutes ago, ScoRoss said:

You don't think that Milan are capable of identifying good players? 

Kessie, Conti, Bonucci... All proven Serie A players. 

You need someone to identify Bonucci?

Who identified Bonucci, Conti or Kessie?  What planet were they living on.

Like I said...  What's going on at Milan is identical to what went on at Valencia on the takeover.  Maybe Serie 'A' is simpler task to just make something like this work.

[True Blue]

Defeated by Dortmund in a pre season friendly 3-1, did any of the new signings play?

[ScoRoss]

1 hour ago, SirBalon said:

You need someone to identify Bonucci?

Who identified Bonucci, Conti or Kessie?  What planet were they living on.

Like I said...  What's going on at Milan is identical to what went on at Valencia on the takeover.  Maybe Serie 'A' is simpler task to just make something like this work.

Massimo Mirabelli. Is it that difficult to figure out?

[SirBalon]

18 minutes ago, ScoRoss said:

Massimo Mirabelli. Is it that difficult to figure out?

We'll see how the season pans out then. I'm sure that if it goes wrong it'll be the coach that gets the blame as per usual and not what I see as a ridiculous bunch of signings with no thought behind them. 

[Rick]

Just in another thread you said that Iniesta would be a brilliant buy for Inter, but how can you be so sure that he isn't just in the 'right place' at Barcelona as you claim Bonucci was next to Chielini? 

[SirBalon]

22 minutes ago, FOYM said:

Just in another thread you said that Iniesta would be a brilliant buy for Inter, but how can you be so sure that he isn't just in the 'right place' at Barcelona as you claim Bonucci was next to Chielini? 

Iniesta is a commodity in midfield. He is a part you add and magic occurs. He isn't part of how a system needs to work. I don't know if you get what I mean?

For example, a traditional centre back wouldn't work at Barcelona and needs to have certain attributes for it to work. 

[El Profesor]

On 19/07/2017 at 5:54 AM, SirBalon said:

You need someone to identify Bonucci?

Who identified Bonucci, Conti or Kessie?  What planet were they living on.

Like I said...  What's going on at Milan is identical to what went on at Valencia on the takeover.  Maybe Serie 'A' is simpler task to just make something like this work.

I think Milan needed to do that because their team was really weak. There was no option, but I agree that more often than not, this path does not end well. Internazionale has been trying for some years now to spend their way out of mediocrity without sucess. Also, remember Roma under Luis Enrique some seasons ago? A failure as well. 

Building a team from the scratch is no easy feat, especially when the expectations are high, Montella has a very difficult task on his hands. 

[Spike]

On 7/19/2017 at 4:36 AM, ScoRoss said:

You don't think that Milan are capable of identifying good players? 

Kessie, Conti, Bonucci... All proven Serie A players. 

That means f-all. They didn't suddenly become great the moment they proved themselves. They were always talented, now there are just stats for empiricism.

[ScoRoss]

4 hours ago, Spike said:

That means f-all. They didn't suddenly become great the moment they proved themselves. They were always talented, now there are just stats for empiricism.

What are you even on about?

[Spike]

Just now, ScoRoss said:

What are you even on about?

'Proven' means nothing. Those players were just as capable before they were 'proven' because if they weren't they wouldn't become 'proven' would they? It is just a meaningless label that attempts to apply rationality to something irrational like 'talent and ability'.  

If we have two players that are considered fairly similar but one has league experience while the other has none; which  would be more likely to be starting? The later right? Because people put more stock in experience which is equally intangible. People will bang on about being 'proven' but the  throw thst whole concept out the window comparing Messi to Anelka (one is proven in more leagues!). All of a sudden that vslue sttsined through being proven means nothing. How about the recent transfers of Lukaku, Morata, and Lacazette. People are choosing Lukaku as their choice because he is proven, rather than considering the whole picture.

Another example, Luke Shaw played one season in the PL without much improvement. Is he more valuable at the end of the season or at the start? 

[ScoRoss]

I'm sorry my word choice was to your liking. I must be wrong, Bonucci is a crap footballer. Is that better? Does that suit your agenda now?

[Spike]

14 minutes ago, ScoRoss said:

I'm sorry my word choice was to your liking. I must be wrong, Bonucci is a crap footballer. Is that better? Does that suit your agenda now?

Where the fuck did that come from? You're mental, mate. I said nothing even remotely about Bonucci. 'Agenda'  I'm just trying to have a friendly discussion about something football related outside of the normal, haha

[SirBalon]

I don't think anyone said Bonucci was a crap player.  Players aren't only good because they're talented.  Players are many more times than not also good because of a system OR (sometimes even AND) the players they played with.

Back to what I said...  AC Milan seem to be picking off players from some sort of catalogue because no club has planned a buying project this quickly with so many players.  I've never seen this sort of thing work but I've seen it go very wrong on several occasions.

[ScoRoss]

What was Milan's alternate? Run back the same team again?

These signings are no just for next year but for several years to come. Of course they won't magically all gel together instantly, but Milan have identified players who they believe can form a team.

This whole notion that 'Milan are a mess' is unproven is bizarre, we haven't even seen them play a game. Buying players who have performed highly elsewhere 'isn't worth anything', really nothing? And other clubs are deemed to be on some other higher plane of scouting...

We can only see in the months to come, but writing off an entire club because they've made a lot of signings is naive at best.

[ScoRoss]

6 hours ago, Spike said:

Where the fuck did that come from? You're mental, mate. I said nothing even remotely about Bonucci. 'Agenda'  I'm just trying to have a friendly discussion about something football related outside of the normal, haha

Then what are we even talking about? 

This 'bigger notion' of footballing debate has missed any real opinion about their signings but has deemed them failures already. People desperate to look right if it all fails, but not one person has identified a bad signing that will not work out for Milan.

I don't mind if people looked at Borini for example, and said he will not do well because of A, B and C. But no one has, they've just said Milan will fail because they've signed too many players.

[SirBalon]

1 hour ago, ScoRoss said:

What was Milan's alternate? Run back the same team again?

These signings are no just for next year but for several years to come. Of course they won't magically all gel together instantly, but Milan have identified players who they believe can form a team.

This whole notion that 'Milan are a mess' is unproven is bizarre, we haven't even seen them play a game. Buying players who have performed highly elsewhere 'isn't worth anything', really nothing? And other clubs are deemed to be on some other higher plane of scouting...

We can only see in the months to come, but writing off an entire club because they've made a lot of signings is naive at best.

Mate... They can employ my nephew to identify those players. He knows how well each one of them has performed and what their status is.

When a player is identified by the club's technical team (that's how it works in the rest of Europe) they analyse what the coach's requirements are in tune of how he wants his team to play. They look at the backbone of the team and build around that although in this case the existing backbone of AC Milan has more rigidness and stability than the spine on a jellyfish to build on.

History shows us that this way of doing things never works with Man City, Chelsea PSG and recently Valencia doing the same thing at the start. They all went out and paid a lot of money for the dish of the day.

What has AC Milan done to refurnish the backroom staff in terms of the technical team that sits just below the board since the takeover? They weren't exactly doing a marvellous job with the money they had before by signing anything that was doing well in the rest of Europe!

They were a mess then and now they're the same mess only this time with more money to spend.

Only the near future will show us if this works. I would be bloody amazed if it does. 

[ScoRoss]

Milan appointed Massimo Mirabelli to be their 'Sporting Director', or whatever they label it as, so that's a major change in their management structure since the playoffs.

And saying that Chelsea failed? In what way did they fail. They went from sneaking into 4th place on the last day of the season, to 2nd Place the following season and the Champions League Semi Final (beating the so called 'Invicibles' of Arsenal). Then actually winning the title the following season. If that isn't success and an upward trajectory, I don't know what is.

But seemingly running back the same mediocre team is the better alternative?

[ScoRoss]

 

[SirBalon]

THE ADIDAS YEARS OF THE 1990s

 

Success was so swift and so absolute for Silvio Berlusconi’s Milan, that it’s easy to forget when he had taken over the presidency the once prestigious club found itself ridden in debt, having spent two seasons in Serie B in the early 1980s. Though the team already boasted some talented local youngsters including Baresi, Maldini, Donadoni and Evani, their foreign stars were aging. Milan lacked that special player — a Maradona or a Platini — necessary to make the extra leap to domestic and European glory. In the summer of 1987 Berlusconi’s finances (funded at the time by his growing media empire) helped secure the talents of young Dutch stars Ruud Gullit and Marco Van Basten. That season Milan pipped Champions Napoli to the Serie A title, their first scudetto in nine years. Later that summer Gullit and Van Basten proved instrumental in Holland’s first major trophy, the European Championship, and after the tournament their international teammate, Frank Rijkaard, joined them at Milan.

Berlusconi’s influence was not only economical. He insisted his side produce attractive, attacking football, and his power wielded an unprecedented control over transfers, team selection and technical aspects of the side’s preparation. In Arrigo Sacchi he found the ideal coach, an eccentric but brilliant man, who, despite fielding an imperviously strong back four, represented the antithesis of catenaccio. By the end of the decade Milan were once again the dominant force in Europe, winning back-to-back European Cups in 1989 and 1990, a trophy which had eluded them for twenty years. They topped those victories off on both occasions with successive triumphs in the Intercontinental Cup in Tokyo.

Through regular visits to Italy and my burgeoning fixation with calcio I’d become fascinated by Sacchi’s Milan side, and in 1991 I bought the famous maglia rossonera from a store in the northern Tuscan town of Aulla. Given the quality of its domestic league football in Italy was remarkably uncommercialised in those days. All the shirts in the shop were folded in their manufacturers’ plastic wrappers and stacked up to the ceiling; after inquiring about the Milan kit a lady climbed to the top of a ladder to retrieve my size. The shirt was only available with long-sleeves, which seemed impractical to me at the time (it was July) but wholly appropriate once I recalled images of San Siro shrouded in a thick fog, the rossoneri carving out victories from its frosty turf.

Milan had changed kit manufacturer in 1990, switching from Kappa to adidas, but the shirt had remained essentially unchanged for the last four years. The sponsor was still Mediolanum, Berlusconi’s own insurance company, named for the Latin word for Milan (the city). Above it on the right was the gold star which is earned after ten scudetto wins, beneath which sat an embroidered European Cup celebrating the fact that Milan were the current holders of that trophy (a nice initiative which never caught on). In the 1990-91 season Milan finished second in Serie A, a full five points behind scudetto winners Sampdoria, to whom they lost twice. A defeat to lowly Bari in the penultimate match of the season effectively ended their title hopes.

Milan’s good domestic showing was marred by a disastrous European Cup campaign. The rossoneri were aiming for a record-equalling third straight triumph in the competition, and came up against a talented Olympique Marseille team in the quarter-final. The first leg at San Siro ended 1-1; in the return match Chris Waddle had given the French champions the lead on 75 minutes when deep into injury time the floodlights at the Stade Velodrome failed. When power was restored after several minutes Milan refused to return to the pitch – a gesture which most interpreted as a desperate attempt to seize the opportunity for a rematch. Either way the tactic backfired: UEFA awarded a 3-0 result to Marseille, while Milan were banned from all European competition for the 1991-92 season.

His time at Milan having clearly run its course, Arrigo Sacchi left the rossoneri that summer to take over the Italian national team. Under his replacement, Fabio Capello, Milan galloped to a record-breaking Serie A season, becoming the first side to win lo scudetto without defeat. Van Basten finished the season as top scorer with 25 goals. The shirt remained unchanged from the previous season, although since Milan were no longer holders of the European Cup, its presence on the shirt was replaced by the Intercontinental Cup; when Red Star Belgrade took this title away from them in December 1991 they reverted to a traditional Milan logo (incidentally the first appearance of the club crest on the rossoneri jersey).

Milan collected three successive Serie A titles with Capello at the helm, and with success on the pitch changes to the kit remained subtle over the next few seasons. In 1992 a new sponsor arrived in the form of local dessert company Motta, and the following year a new kit deal was launched with the Italian sportswear manufacturer Lotto. Milan re-established their relationship with adidas in 1998, by which time they’d begun a long-term sponsorship by the German car giant Opel.

As Berlusconi ventured into politics his desire to create a European supersquad had resulted in the arrival of some big names — Savicevic, Boban, Papin, Raducioiu, Lentini — all of whom now competed for positions in Milan’s line-up. As Capello struggled with the challenge of keeping his bloated roster of big names happy, the Dutch trio’s dominance became undermined and was effectively broken up. The last time the three played together was the 1993 European Cup final in Munich, a 1-0 defeat by old rivals Marseille. That summer Rijkaard returned to Ajax and Gullit unexpectedly left for Sampdoria. Van Basten stayed at Milan, unaware he’d already played the last game of his career. He remained on the sidelines throughout the 1993-94 season, missing out on the team’s European Cup triumph and that summer’s World Cup, before finally announcing his official retirement in 1995 at the age of 30.

The same summer I bought my Milan shirt I also obtained a giant poster of a young Paolo Maldini wearing the same kit. It was free from the local supermarket in exchange for the purchase of several packets of apricot jam-filled Kinder brioche (my brother got Baggio). Something about the lighting always made me believe the photo was taken at the San Paolo in Naples (the ball is correct, Paolino wore short-sleeves in that fixture, and there’s clearly an ad for Mars in the background). Either way the poster hung pinned on my bedroom wall for over a decade, and now hangs framed in my apartment in New York, just feet from where I sit as I write this. A few years ago adidas relaunched the 1990-91 shirt as a limited edition replica, presumably for fans who now regretted not getting their hands on it the first time. Yet somehow the remake wasn’t quite the same. The sponsor was too large and the slightly bulbous adidas logo had been corrected. The material was too glossy, too well-made. It was as if the memories of both the shirt’s manufacturer and its consumer had been warped by the team’s own legend. Milan weren’t perfect, and nor was their shirt. But both came mighty close.

Credits to: James Campbell Taylor

[ScoRoss]

Gutted for him. Probably in danger of missing out on the World Cup next summer.

[Rick]

Bonnuci will come good, as will this team. They are less than ten games into their first season together as a squad, if people expected them to be as good as Juventus, Roma, Inter and Napoli this soon then they are retarded. 

But the owners see only results, so I wouldn't be surprised to see some stupid decisions made in the coming months. Give the manager until the end of the season, or at least until it looks like top four is at risk...then bring in Ancelotti.