Not sure I understand this. He is either called up (in the field or on the bench) or not. if not, he can do what he wants, nobody can force him to "sit in the stands".

But personally, if he is not going to start, I see no reason to even keep him on the bench. And I sure hope they do not start him.

Quite possible. But I have worked with an Asian company for a while, and they do not like anything that could be seen as "losing face". So I would be not surprised if the directive is to let him sit and rot.


Good riddance. (Except maybe Abate.)


I will refrain from commenting on B&G. They are history.

'sit in the stands' is not literal. What I mean is I see zero point in us having a contract rebel on the books. Either play him or sell him. Leaving him as a wage, or what we call in the UK 'Gardening Leave' is utterly fruitless.

I think that would be unprofessional. From a situation where we had no money to now being happy waste it in order to 'save face'? Not for me, thanks.

Sorry, we disagree on this. First of all, I see no point in playing Donna when his heart is not in the game (and in fact we have already seen a deterioration in the last few months, and the situation now is much worse). More important, since we are forced to buy a new keeper, we should look at the future and not the past, meaning we should start our new keeper not the one that's going away. We can argue if it is worth keeping Donna on the bench, but even then I think we are better off using a backup keeper that will be with us longer term.

Also, do not underestimate the importance of not losing face in Asian cultures. Decisions of much, much bigger impact than the loss of a mere 40M have been made in order to not lose face.

As for the 'sit in the stands' part, here is why I am confused ...

How is there a danger to the "physical safety of Donnarumma"? And surely Raiola cannot bring legal action if Milan simply decides to start someone ahead of him.

There is no reason to take Raiolas threats too serious, dont worry. They would be able to sue us if the clubs rethoric is of thaf kind that foster anger among the fans up until that level that someone attacks Dolla. But seeing how the management is handling this, they have no basis to sue the club.

And not playing him is not an offence - unless they contracted something different, which I doubt. The guy is still on a "minors" contact and he is expected not to start.

Stilll suspect you're missing the point - when I say 'play or sell' I really mean selling is the only option because, as you say, he's not focused on playing. And for me that is the only outcome - he must be sold. It's that simple. The circus that would follow him being in our squad but not playing would detract from everything else. Get rid of him for whatever price we can get, but he can't stay.

PS: Wait. I've been seeing him deteriorate since last November and NOW folk can see it?! Everyone on this forum to a person disagreed with me! EVERYONE! And no one even said he'd deteriorated in the past few months either. Amazing what a contract situation does with perception!



You're not getting it. I don't give a sh*t what culture our owners are from, they are the owners of an Italian club who have been financially stricken for long enough. We are only in the first window of the new ownership and we're now happy to chuck away 40M just to make a point? Beyond the pain that will inflict on FFP is the disregard it shows for the suffering we've had for 5 years.

When in Rome do as the Romans do.

He's our biggest star. And now it's a circus. Start or not, we need rid of the guy ASAP.

I don't want us to be seen as assholes. I'm also worried if this will make the club seem ruthless to the players in the squad. Make them feel they're under some kind of brutal regime. I'm sure a lot of players will have a bond with the kid and not want his career destroyed.

Here's what I think we should do. Milan should come out and say this is Dollarumma's price - let's say 45 MM. If a team won't pay that, he stays in Milan to leave on a free. So 100% transparency. Less space for Raiola and his family to play victim and the whole world knows what the deal is.

At the same time as our pal, Forza Milan! put it - Rossoneri Sport save face.

I'm in favour of Perin for sure. When fit, he's a national squad shoo-in. I'm an old romantic so I believe Milan players must always compete for a place in the national squad, and I love the Ital-Milan idea. So..

Theoretically reasonable but practically impossible. We cannot let 50M just walk away for nothing next summer.

I was talking from law perspective.

Who actually thinks Donna will still be here next season?

No club is committed to playing a player by law, no matter how big he is. Real and Barca can bench Ronaldo and Messi, no law court could force them to play them as that's a technical decision taken by the coach. So once again, Raiola has no legal leg to stand on here.


He's not even worth 50m now with the way he's f@cked us over, we'd be lucky to get 40m at best. And if the new owners don't think losing 30 to 40 is an issue, I don't see why we should lose any sleep over it either

Not me. Not a smart thing to do. Sure, it's tempting to make an example out of him but it's not going to benefit us. Like some of the members said, we don't want this to turn into a circus. So let's deal with this professionally regardless of how gutted we feel. Surprisingly, we can salvage much more from this situation than we thought. Ie. use him as a bargaining chip to get the world-class midfielder we need.

I thought me and Jack (to an extent) were on our own here!