AC Milan general spiel

[RobHood]

[RobHood]

[vtec]

[vtec]

[The MAN]

[shingai]

[The MAN]

How can u compare those 3 purchases together? seriously, this is just just absurd

Weah was already a top 3 player or so when we got him, and made him the best (i think he won FIFA POY at last season at PSG or maybe 1st season at Milan). $heva was a rising star in European football and at 23 a feared striker that made Dynamo Kiev one of Europe's top performers in CL ( for 2-3 years or so)...remember his hat-trick at Nou Camp, another vs Bayern when I think got knocked out in the semis at some point. He was a beast and only got better for the next 5-6 years at Milan

Both players were on the rise. No similarities whatsoever to Becks. two moves about football and the 3rd isn't, period.

[shingai]

First of all, you aren't privy to Berlusconi's private thoughts, so to say that the Beckham move is purely one way or the other is to say you know a man you've never met.

Second, my point was that there were sporting motives for all three transfers, and there were non sporting (marketing) motives for all three transfers. There is a reason why Milan went after Sheva and Weah in particular when there were hundreds of other men who could have filled their spots just as ably (if not as prolifically). Some of those reasons are sporting (those guys were beasts on the field) and marketing (getting the next superstar BEFORE they get big). Similarly, the Beckham move had both elements - marketing...well that one's obvious. And sporting - as we've seen the guy has had a significant impact from day 1, and if you would turn off your blind hatred for the man for just one second and look at his actual track record (and career accomplishments) he has the kind of experience/success at the highest level that Ancelotti requires from his players.

Third, that is the lesser of the points I was making. My biggest point was that the present squad is good/talented enough to win the league, and that their poor play is more indicative of half-ass coaching, and that by extension your disappointment stems from a lack of respect for the process by which champions are made (intense pregame preparation before every single game) by simply expecting to win just because the team's name is Milan.

My assessment is that Milan's inconsistency is due primarily to Carlo's lack of consistent intensity that consistently (and LEAGUE winning) successful coaches have that their players feed off of - that half-ass performances are not tolerated and that effort gets more playtime than pure talent. Indifferent substitutions, poor player combinations, lack of tactical adaptibility, and rewarding unmotivated players with playtime while benching guys that play their hearts out are all things that are fucking this team more than foolishly prideful/shameless transfer policies, yet most of the attention seems to be pointed to Berlusconi. The Dallas Cowboys won 3 superbowls in 5 years in the mid-90's in spite of a Berlusconi-like owner in Jerry Jones. Jimmy Johnson put the team together so well that it won its last with Barry Switzer, who had an indifferent coaching career after that. If Carlo was a better coach, you'd be chuckling at Berlu the way Barca fans chuckle at Laporta

[p_maldini_3]

i think its fair to say that 95% of the motivation to loan beckham was for economic reasons. ancelotti, galliani, and most of the team have publicly stated that beckham is performing better than expected. why would they say such a thing? because their expectations were low from the start. even i'll admit that he is performing better than i have expected, but it only indicates my low expectations for his contributions to the team.

i think it would be rather naive to say that signing beckham was half sporting and half economic. i think its rather obvious with the new direction the management is taking. the decision to sell kaka' was definitely not sporting, it was economic. that is the problem that i have with our management, most of our decisions are being motivated by economics rather than sport. you try to keep a balance between the two, but for the sake of fuck, don't make it so obvious that everything is economically motivated. we are becoming the second coming of galacticos, and it is absolutely disgusting.

i also think that comparing beckham's transfer to shevchenko or weah is a very big stretch. weah and shevchenko are two unique players who had massive amounts of talent. they were bought for purely sporting reasons, atleast for the most part. they were young, and they were fresh. beckham is a dead compost heap who's running on fumes. i think its insulting to weah and shevchenko [part 1] to compare beckham to them. he can't shine their boots.

[RobHood]

C'mon Shingai, you don't need to be Berlusconi's family or PA to know why Beckham was bought. A 33 year old, seemingly washed up footballer, playing mediocre at best in a league which wouldn't compare favorably with the Serie B. But he has an immense fan following, he's the most recognizable footballer in the States (un american at least) and would guarantee interest from the rest of Europe and Asia. I don't think anyone is disputing the fact that he is doing a decent enough job for us; just that some people don't like the reasons he was bought.
The player who would fit in your reasoning would be Ronaldinho; marketing and sporting reasons...he hasn't really succeeded in either. I was all for getting him as well and am very disappointed that he probably will never be as good as he once was.

I still don't understand what you're trying to say with the Sheva and Weah transfers...if we could've gotten our youth players to develop into world beaters, I'm sure we'd have given them a shot. How many of them have actually gone on to be anywhere as good as Sheva or Weah? We needed a like replacement for MVB and we got Weah; time for Weah to retire and we bought Sheva. Not exactly like our current situation in which Gattuso is out injured, we have Flamini but we go out and get Beckham instead. I guess what tec and The Man have against this whole situation is that Beckham could have well and truly fucked up our season.

I agree with most of what you say about Carlo but to absolve the management of blame is pretty silly. We had many opportunities to strengthen our defense but we chose not to, get a better goalie - we give Dida a massive new contract, we sell our top scorer in Sheva and get Oliviera. But yes, Carlo needs to step up big time to keep his job but like I've mentioned earlier there aren't many coaches I'd rather have either.

[shingai]

It's like this - a small club can't afford large transfer fees or wages, so they HAVE to develop young players. A big club that makes a good amount of money has the flexibility of making calculated gambles on the transfer markets - they gamble on a promising young talent, the idea being that there will be some sporting and some financial return on the investment. Spend $35Million on a single player once every year or two (the way Man Utd seems to), and its half economic half sporting, but the two are tied together. You spend the big bucks to get a guy that can perform well enough to help the team win silverware. Just as important as the silverware is the cash prize that goes to the club, which can then be used to recruit more players for next year. The better the overall caliber of players you can recruit, the better your trophy (cash prize) chances are, the more fans you'll get, the more merchandise you sell, etc. Revenue generation is at the bottom of every personnel decision that a club makes it, no matter how much of a purist you want to be. Football has been like this since the 80's. Beckham's purchase was an extension of this, but I think some of you are also forgetting that its possible that Capello facilitated this and that taking Beckham may have been a money-making favor to an old hero from Berlu. In which case, from Beckham's standpoint, the transfer was completely for sporting reasons (actually, regardless of how you look at it, from his standpoint it is purely sporting - which kind of absolves him from your scorn, which, if you insist on having it, should be directed at Carlo)

Speaking of recruiting, a history of paying big wages (and winning trophies) will help recruit big name players in their prime (or even past their prime), while a string of young starlets who hit big after signing with the club will help entice the young, highly sought after players. Football is a treadmill, where clubs throw money at players in the hope that the player's on field exploits will provide a positive return both in a sporting sense and an economic sense. As we've seen with clubs like Leeds United, the finances have to make sense - no club is going to throw $40M indefinitely if that kind of expenditure is not bringing anything in.
Point is, the purchases of Weah and Sheva were made based on calculations of future revenue since their sporting contributions were in doubt until they proved themselves worthy of the fees on the field.

I've already stated my stance on the transfer policy - I think its the result of pride of the most foolish sort, and I'm not absolving management of responsibility. But its like saying that Americans should simply let their country go to shit simply because their Congress is full of fools who don't actually know anything about economics...No! At the end of the day, Berlu is not the one playing. And as I've said - and no has said anything to disagree - this squad has the talent to win the league AS IS. No it's not the strongest defense, but Kaka, Pato, and Dinho are good enough to make most defenses require extra Depens, and the rest of the midfield includes some very talented players in their own right. But when Pirlo seems to connect on only half of his passes (and he's the locus of the offense) and if Seedorf plays like he doesn't care, and if Kaka can't beat players on the run the way he used to, the team has become predictable, uncreative, and slow. It's the coaches job to recognize these things and make changes based on the current personnel. He hasn't done that - he's forced guys into a stale tactic

[vtec]

and another thing, i don't hate beckham at all. in fact, he may yet win me over. if you guys think that he is exceeding your expectations, what do you think he is doing to mine? i had the over-under on goals he would score this season that didn't come from the spot at 1.5. don't blame the player at all for him coming here. it's the management i am sick of.

[maro]

shingai, I enjoy your posts - they're thoughtful and articulate which makes a change around here (from 'tec and mouldy-knee, especially, who are just bitch-schlappers). Still, this time I think your argument is based on a mildly insane premise. Or, at least, on a couple of wonky premises: first, that players of the quality of Shevchenko or Weah can be straightforwardly developed through a club's youth (of course one gets some that way - De Rossi, Totti, Aquilani, perhaps, if we're lucky, Curci, Rosi, Okaka - but one's unlikely to find 11 top-drawer players that way, regardless of the money you invest (you need the odd Eto'o and Alves to go with your Puyol and Iniesta). And, secondly, that the balance of business and footballing ability was the same with those two players as with the signing of Beckham. I quite like Beckham; I think he's always been an honest professional and a much better player than his detractors have deemed him to be. Still, I don't think there's any question that his off-the-field reputation and publicity is entirely out of proportion to his ability on it. He's been a very good player for a long time, but miles short of the very best and yet off the pitch he's easily the most marketed figure. And so there's a basic sense in which there's a disjunction between his business value and his playing value which wasn't the case with Shevchenko, say. However many shirts Shevchenko sold was kind of directly related to the number of goals he scored, to the performances he produced, to his quality as a footballer. The same doesn't apply in Beckham's case. The proportions are so different that this isn't really a difference in degree, it's a difference in kind. You could argue, I think, that if the club is making money from the whole Beckham thing in order to be able to buy Messi and De Rossi next season, then the effect is a business-decision enabling footballing development, but I think that's a real stretch and still wouldn't be to my taste.

Anyway, that's already to make a move away from what you've laid out here. The acquisition of Beckham, unlike those of Weah or Shevchenko, was not a footballing move made with an eye on its making business sense; it was a business move made almost independently of whether or not it made footballing sense. This is surely the point that so many Milanisti, who love the maglia, object to.

[arthurfonzarelli]

[p_maldini_3]

[shingai]

[RobHood]

[vtec]

[shingai]

100% sporting vtec? So there were absolutely no financial considerations that went into those decisions? Such as whether Milan could afford to pay their wages, such as whether Milan could pay their transfer fees and still pay the wages of other good players, etc. Dude, I gave you an example of a club that bought players on purely a sporting basis - they're called Leeds and they fell into financial ruin because they didn't consider the business aspects. They had to sell their whole squad and ultimately got relegated.
And least sporting move ever made by the club? In its entire history? Really? What about the second Shevchenko transfer and all the prodigal son crap surrounding that? At least Beckham actually plays crucial minutes! Sheva only comes in during friendlies and when Milan is already 3-0 up with 5 minutes left in the game.

You mind attaching at least some justification or reasoning of your very presumptuous statements? I promise I'll read all of it

[San Paolo]