You know that Pogba is 23, right? Ronaldo has been called a choker in big games as well, look how it turned up.

The commercial side of the story is less interesting. Sure, they've earned a load of money on him. But at the same time they gave away a substantial proportion of that money for Higuain. Are they honestly better that way now? I don't think so.

Matuidi certainly isn't better then Pogba. And we'll see if they even sign him in the first place.

Um, he's 23, so what? That's old enough. It's not like he's 18 or something. And don't compare him to Ronaldo cos they're entirely different players.

The commercial side might be less interesting for you, but you do realize they just gained 110 million out of nothing. That's 15% of the whole sum Berlusconi is selling Milan, just for one player.

And are you seriously telling me that a Juve with Pjanic and Higuain but without Pogba isn't better than the contrary? Nope, I don't buy that for a bit.

Matiudi certainly isn't better? Where do you get that certainty from? What exactly has Pogba accomplished to be considered the most expensive player in the world? Nothing.

Okay, okay, we seem to disagree completely.

By stating that he's 23 I meant to say that there's still lots of potential within him. He can surpass this apparent choker attitude you seem to worry about. He has immense physical capabilities, he is skilled and has great technique and intelligence. He's played a Euro final, a CL final, won tons of Italian trophies - since you ask. A now let me ask you. What has a 29 year old Matuidi ever done to be considered better?

But I don't like such debates, I only stated the question to indulge you and point to some evident flaws in logic. I think what's important is that Pogba is still in his formative years and shows lots of promise to be one of the better midfielders of the new age. Matuidi is on a downward spiral.

Sure, the commercial aspect is brilliant. Again, we are not talking about this stuff. Sure it's a great deal commercially. I'm looking at the footballing aspect. With Alves, Pjanić, Pjaca and Higuain in and Pogba, Morata, Cuadrado out I don't see much important improvement in terms of CL quality/pretender material. Sorry.

I like Matuidi a lot, but I seriously don't think he's better than Pogba

Also, think back to the beginning of last season when Pogba was injured and Juve were struggling. They started to claw their way back once he was back in the team. He's a huge talent, and in today's crazy transfer climate he's worth what United have paid. Don't think that's the case with Juve an Higuain though. He's no where near worth that. Sure he's a proven Serie A striker who will easily score 25+ goals in the league alone. But they were going to walk all over the league with or without Higuain. His signing was a frivolous one meant to soften the blow of selling Pogba.

Are Juve better off now that they've sold arguably their best and most marketable player? I honestly don't think so, not in terms of the CL which is their goal for next season. Pjanic and Higuain are both great players, but they've lost someone who's on another level and will continue to get better in the coming years.

I personally think it's a blow to them footballing wise. Forget what they got for him, which they pretty much spent all of it and then some on Higuain (90+ million and Pjanic 30+ million)

I guess the idea of trowing that much money at Higuain was that they would have a better chance to win the CL. I am not a huge fan of Higuain (very good player, but not great, AFAIAC). And the loss of Pogba may cause them more problems than they realize. Have to wonder if we are going to see more of an "Allegri style" Juve now, and it will be interesting to see how that will work for them. (Most likely they will win the scudetto again, but they may not do as well in CL as they are hoping.)

That said, this does show what a well-managed team can do. When Juve got Pogba, he was not that expensive. Juve went for a young player with promise, and (right or wrong) they are now "cashing in". Meanwhile, we went for ... what? A bunch of nameless players, which we overpaid and could not / cannot get rid of.

This post has been edited by Forza Milan!: Aug 8 2016, 04:07 PM

True. OTOH, it looks like the new management will block the kind of moves we made in the past, bringing in useless players (well past their prime or just plain worthless) and paying them so much that it then becomes near-impossible to get rid of them. Bottom line, I am more optimistic than I have been in recent years, despite the fact that we are out of time.

Undoubtedly Juventus is a shrewdly managed team. But that's also the reason the fail to capitalize in Europe so often. They value marketing and the Serie A apparently much more. It's a club that had Zidane but failed to make a true impact in Europe with him. They usually sell their (non-Italian) marquee players for unthinkable sums, yet fail to excel and always satisfy with picking up the cream from Serie A and dominating Italian football.

At this stage, I agree that a couple of good additions will go a lot further than multiple average players. Will not fix all of our problems, but it should make us a little more competitive, perhaps good enough to get to Europa.

However, sadly we are still linked with Zaza. In my mind, Zaza is gonna be forever associated to this. He was brought in to do one job, and ...

True. OTOH, right now I would rather be Juve than Milan.

You can say in this case that Juve are a well run business because no other truly elite side would sell their best player. no matter the money. Do you see Real selling Ronaldo/Modric/Kroos/etc while they're in their prime? Never. Same thing with Barca, Bayern, etc.

Juve losing their best player to a team that's not even in the CL for me speaks volumes in terms of their ambitions and Serie A in general.

Yes they made other big signing, but as you mentioned, they pick off the league's best players and sell their biggest stars outside of it. That's their MO, it's always been their MO and it's why they'll never be a huge brand outside of Italy.

As for Allegri, he still has the undisputed best team in the league, he's in an even better position than he probably ever really was, aside from his Scudetto season with us. There's no real competition for the league, his team greatly weakened his direct competitors. But I'm thinking they'll struggle in the CL this year


Yep, no way Galliani will be allowed to do what he wants as he was allowed to in the past, he has people to answer to now, and most outlets seem pretty sure that he won't last at Milan past the closing of the sale to the Chinese. Any move he makes will have to get a seal of approval from people other than Berlu now. The days of satisfying Genoa and his agent buddies are over.


Agreed. Plus I feel that in this case the business aspect of running the club was considered more than the footballing one, which imo will hurt the team in the long run


Yep. At this point, if we really do have a very limited budget, I'd rather things stay as they are and we make proper signings when the cash influx comes in rather than making a couple of panic buys, who might be slight improvements over the current crop we have (Badelj for example is better than all our current mids, but he'd only be a slight improvement) but won't really add much to the team as a whole. I hope Galliani is not allowed to continue with his long standing philosophy of quantity over quality

I've been researching our new signing. Gustavo Gomez and I'm really hearing great things. A lot of fans from S.America saying we made a steal. He's been core to the league winning side in Argentina and is supposedly quite physical without being tactically foolish.

I'm quite curious to see him play.

I'm not sold on Cuadrado. I find him to be a very inconsistent player tending to drift out of games too often to my liking but we don't have a player like him in our roster so I can't say I'm against it. We now mostly lack quality in the centre midfield area. Too many tractors, not enough artists.

I really don't view Pogba as a big star and an integral part of this Juventus side. As I said, he is massively overrated and never performs in the big games. Undoubtedly he's a very good player and has room for improvement, but for 110 million I wouldn't think twice about selling him. Juve have made a fantastic move in this regard, I will never stop stressing this enough.

It's like you speak to yourself. Everyone acknowledged this fantastic move. But we're talking also about the footballing side. You failed to answer what Matuidi achieved that would make him so great. Also, can you give us some examples of Pogba not performing in big games?

Milan (along with Inter and Roma) linked now with Nasri. He sure is more capable then our current creators. That being said, he proved to be rather difficult to work with, so I'd rather find someone new.

Yeah, I've read good things as well, also watched a couple of vids on youtube, He seems to be fairly quick, good on the ball, pretty good tackler and from the very limited opinion I could form by watching a compilation (which I admit could be very misleading) he seems to be a good reader of the game considering the amount of times he bailed his teammates out. I guess we'll see, but I'm convinced that he can't be any worse than Zapata, Ely or even Paletta. I honestly don't know why we renewed Zapata's contract he's been terrible for a long while now. And Paletta seems to be wanted by Atalanta, we should cash in if there's an opportunity


But in retro-spect you think that Higuain was a good singing? You admit that he's not worth what Juve paid for him. I personally think Juve took 2 steps backwards with this. It won't really effect them domestically but I think we'll see the result of this move in the CL


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Honestly, I'd rather try to make an offer to Barca for Turan. He seems surplus there, and I think he'd be a great add for Montella to play a 4-2-3-1.