Berlusconi Rejected Chance To Sign Buffon

Juventus goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon had a pre-contract deal to sign for Milan this summer but Rossoneri President Silvio Berlusconi pulled the plug on the deal.

According to the Gazzetta dello Sport, Buffon had agreed a four-year contract, worth €6m a season, but Berlusconi stopped the transfer from going through because it would have cost him €25m.

Instead the former Prime Minister of Italy wanted to spend this money on renewing the contract of Brazilian keeper Dida, and bringing in youngster Alexandre Pato and midfielder Emerson.

Milan fans will surely be dismayed by the news that Buffon could have signed for the club. So far this season Dida has made a number of high-profile mistakes, particularly during the week three draw against Siena, while 31-year-old Emerson looks a shadow of the once great player he was.

The Milan hierarchy have been criticised enormously for their transfer policy over the summer, with the failure to bring in a top-class striker and a decent back-up goalkeeper the main points of condemnation.

These latest reports that Berlusconi turned down the chance to sign the undisputed number-one goalkeeper in the world, will certainly not go down well with the supporters.

goal.com

I hope it's just an invented story, because I'd never forgive him for losing out on the chance to sign the absolute No1 goalkeeper in the world.

Sadly, this is actually true. And also regarding Toni and Henry. Henry was convinced and had agreed to join Milan. The financial stuff was all an excuse.

I don't know what is going on in Silvio's head, but I know the following: What he wants is what he gets. Whether it be Ronaldinho or whatever that may be. The strategy hasn't worked for this season, but I have my faith until he's alive.

why can't some of you realize that we do not NEED a new goalkeeper...Buffon may be better than Dida at the moment, but Dida is still a world class keeper.

We have no world class goal scorers...I'm more pissed at him for not signing any goal scorers than passing up on Buffon.

and as much as Silvio wants to believe it, Kaka is not a Serie A striker.

no comment

It has nothing to do with that. It's just a matter of opinion. I too believe we do need a keeper cause Dida is only getting worse... I don't think we'll have another chance to get Buffon! And even if now I'm OK with Dida, Buffon is better so it'd be even better if he was here right now!

It's from Goal.com and reprinted from Gazzetta, so I'm not getting too wet about it.

What the hell is a pre-contract deal? (Besides, wasn't Berlu going around saying that nobody was going to earn more than Kaka?)

Considering that we've scored five goals and gone winless in our last five matches, I'd say we have bigger fish to fry at this time than acquiring a new goalkeeper.

which world are you talking about?

REALLY!!!???

Did you see him in Celtic game? every fvcking time we're paying for his mistakes. how in the hell is he a world class? accept he IS over. we should sign Amelia in January.

what is worse? dida or our ability to not score any goals? it's not like we've had a game where every ball goes right past dida...but we've had many games were our strikers have missed very easy opportunities (or simply not created opportunities in the first place).

i'm not saying that i don't want someone like buffon and i said that he is better than dida, but a goalkeeper should not be on the top of our list.

we should be more upset that we missed henry, etoo, trezeguet and ronalindho than buffon

Its safe to admit we have problems in attack and defence

If this news is true then i will be dismayed, as GK mistakes are much more costly than a striker miss kicking for example

Why do we have to choose? Both problems are equally need to be taken care of.

Not scoring any goals is a little bit worse, getting Ronaldo back and signing a proven striker is definitely Milan's priority. but we cannot risk playing Dida in our decisive league and Europe games anymore. he can ruin all of the team's effort with just one of his famous blunders...

Exactly and...




exactly!!

Im with warchant here.

Whats the use of trying to win a game when you cant score.

Even if Dida played the best game of his life , we would still have laurel & hardy up front trying to figure out what side the goal is .

You are wrong. Dida is about a Seria B goal keeper now. I believe there are even better 'keepers there. THat's not the point. The point is, a 'keeper like Buffon is worth at least 20 points per season. Dida in his current form would, on the hand cost you at least 15 points per season.

^^^

Good point.

///\\\

I just hope we sign Amelia in January.

Both the attack and Dida (and defence and subs) are problems... what everyone is saying is that having a problem fixed is not bad, unless you think otherwise!

Agreed , but the attack is horrible. Even if we had a good defende and good goalkeeper , we wouldn't concede goals but we wouldnt score them either.

The fact we dont have a sheva type of striker is losing us games. Its not like we dont create any chances , we just dont have guys in front who can finish them off.

Then at least you earn a draw Much much better than "you can't score, then your 'keeper scores for your opponents"

Seriously though, no matter how prolific your attack is, a very porous 'keeper spells doom. In a situation where your strikers score a lot and your keeper lets in alot, u will be always in a situation where you need to outscore the opponent. A bad 'keeper erodes confidence at the backline, you know.

One year ago we missed a striker and a midfielder.
Now we miss a striker, a midfielder and a keeper.
Next season it will be a team that will miss.

It's that simple,..

This man speaketh the truth

Even if we have got trouble scoring, keeping clean sheets is absolutely vital. Getting Gigi would have shored the defence as they would be ably to rely on him, unfortunately the same can't be said for Dida...

Look over here, at this point in time, we can all speak with the benefit of hindsight.

But if Buffon was skipped, because we could buy Emerson AND Pato. I can't fault it too much. In that case, nobody should complain about getting R10 for a zillion dollars since we can get someone else with that money.

And honestly Dida ended last season pretty well. In fact since winter, he was pretty solid. I even remember the forum moaning about Kalac, wishing we had Nelson back. We'd put it down to poor form.

We've got trouble scoring, we've got no depth in mid-field and we've got a declining GK. Berlusconi had to choose between plugging two of the three holes or plugging one. And no he had no way of knowing that Dida would have this horrible patch this season OR that Ronaldo would be injured this long. You wanna talk of injure prone, there was a certain Pippo Inzaghi who'd had worse injuries than Ronnie, and now plays like he's Gila's age(ahhh Gila...).

I'll tell you what he did know though, that Milan with all their great run last season, and winning the CL et al and finishing 4th in Serie A, made a profit of 1 mill Euro. (Inter were at -120). While Porty's favourite English club l'Arsenal just published profits of 51 mill. And don't even compare our two seasons 2006-07.

Look he made an economic decision, if last year in the summer transfer window (80% of this forum was going duck-hunting I remember!), you'd been told Buffon or Emerson+Pato, I know what the forum would have said. Option B, we can always buy <insert hot new talent here> later; Dida can still cut it for now.

The only criticism that you could pull, is to say he shoulda done an Abramovich and splashed a lot of money left and right. But isn't that one reason why a lot of us had a hidden smirk when Chelsea(chelski) got kicked out , since WE didn't need money to win gold, while Chelski could spend like hell and get f@ck-all.

Look, I'm not saying we are not in a mess right now. I'm not saying it was unavoidable either. But to put yourself in the board's shoes and claim every single move they made had no basis in reason is pushing it slightly(only slightly).

of course we want dida over kalac because he is worse. of course dida had some good form last season, who doesnt??!?! the point is he's bad form heavily outweighs his good and the only reason dida had a chance to have some good games was because the players in front of him, we almost wonnothing because of his blunders in the CL. he put our whole season in jeopardy on numerous occasions.


No one gave berlusconi an ultimatum, buffon or emerson and pato. he decided that he wanted to neglected several problems.



if had the choice between a boring team that isnt winning but in good economic shape (+1m) or a more exciting team that with several of our problems solved but with a defecit or 19-24m i would pick option B every single time because in the long run it's better for everyone. You gotta spend some to make some, dont think that spending an extra 25 m on a couple of good players like toni ( 9 m) + sumone else would hurt us that much. of course that gonna add more excitement which in turn brings in more money from the fans.


we spent what 26m during the summer.. theres around 10 teams in the prem that spent more money than us... ... so if we spent an extra 25 which would have appeased the fans. ur saying that spending 50m in one transfer market (which is 40% of what real and barca spent) is abromovich type spending!?!?! plz 50m is below average for any big club in europe nowadays.

Thats a very good post, and you do have a valid point but Silvio is a billionaire with possibly as much money as Abra, £25m to him wouldn't be that much in the grand scheme of things. I heard a rumour(possible BS BTW) that Silvio didn't want to help Juve strengthen with £25m. I am speculating now but if Buffon's price would have been £15m or less then I think we would have got him.
As much as I have stood up for Dida I thought he should have gone/stepped down last season. He was never the same after the fare incident and has lost us a few points with his blunders - someone like Buffon would probably give us a possible 10 points in a season, that coud be the difference between 1st and 2nd or 4th and 5th
IMO Gigi is the best in the world and would be more useful than R10 but it seems Silvio disagrees

If we had any, just any chance of signing Gigi it is gone now. we won't ever see Buffon in Milan unless Juve get relegated again.

i think one thing we can all agree on

our team is terrible right now

we also started this bad last season and pulled it around when we needed to...let's just hope the same happens again

We may have trouble scoring, but how many games this season have we failed to score? 1 is it? In that case, considering we've hardly had a tough game yet, a few clean sheets would have meant we'd have some more wins.

4 out of our 6 serie a games have been 1 goal games..you can't expect to win every game with one goal

And how many of those 4 have we won? A team with our quality you'd expect to be able to keep 2 clean sheets, especially when you take into account who we were playing. Bu we won NONE of those games.

Our quality lol?? Don't make me laugh. Our gk is past his prime and can't hold onto a ball if his life depended on him. He fears corner kicks like cristiano fears gattuso. Lets try and forget he did the diving incident. Our defence Oddo average at best, janku(NOT A DEFENDER), Bonera (um...why did we buy him over barzagli?), Nesta (past prime no longer world's best). Midfield Ambro (sorry i love the guy, but we just dont need him in our current state. I say sacrifice for attacking player.) Pirlo (quality). Gattuso (quality) Seedorf (average quality). kaka (only one who does anything). Inzaghi (past his prime, we can't keep depending on someone who is 35 to win us matches). Gilardino (I'm not even gonna comment).

So we have truly 3 quality players. Kaka pirlo gattuso. Everyone else is average right now. So porty im waiting for your rant about what happened to the rest of the 80 million.

I completely agree with you Bluesummers.

This problem has been a long time coming, we've just kept too many of the same players without adding depth for too long. Last season was poor, people are using the CL win to cover that up. I want to hear the excuses when we don't win anything of significance this season.

And the CWC isn't of significance, the Coppa is bigger than that.

I'm going to have to disagree with you guys about Nesta. I think he IS still in his prime. And honestly - Celtic game aside - when he's been on the pitch, he's at least been TRYING going forward which is something he rarely does.

i've noticed that with nesta. he tries to get forward and make thru ballz to the forwards. good on his part.

i'd still consider nest quality and in the top 10 CB in the world. but when maldini retires i expect us to sign a world class CB to play with nesta.

Don't count it, as bald scrooge likes his way of doing transfers, one player a window. If nesta gets injured, kala bonera and simic as back up in the back. I bet that makes everyone feels just nice warm and fuzzy inside.

Manchester United will disagree with you

C'mon, even you do not believe this? Why, you don't need a soothsayer to tell you Dida is gone form-wise. And that Ronaldo in all probability would stay injured for some time, if not most, of the season. Or pippo for that matter. So if Pippo defied custom and stay healthy (for now!), that is enough to assume Ronaldo will do same? Look, they knew all this. How can they not? They are just acting cheap. Or plain stupid.

Erm...well Ronaldo was not injured when the season ended. He was not injured when it began either. If I'm right he picked up this new injury while training for matchday 1.

And as for defying tradition. Pippo was the first, then there's Max who seems well enough. Nesta playing equally good after his treatment. Kaka's injury has made a full recovery. Rino is never injured(touch wood!). So I'll have to say it was R99 who was the exception.

He was fit, he'd lost weight. They'd even moved over from his physical fitness to diagnosing his hypothyroidism and all.

Going thru Ron's injury history, you see that he can get injured at the begiining of the season, middle of the season, or end of the season. Anytime. Doesn't mean anything if he appears healthy during pre-season. Nesta doesn't belong to the injury-prone club. Sure he got that nasty shoulder thing, but no way you can put him as unreliable injurywise as to need a backup for him. As for Max, is he that critical? Even if he is, we got cover there. The absence/presence of Max is not in any way critical to our survival. We are talking about a certain department of the team (attack) that everyone knows has no cover.

Actually yes...Carletto said so himself..."It was vital that we get Max back from injury!"



Not really...only after we got Emerson...and that was because we gave up on Buffon IF this report is true.

And even if I'm to agree with you over Ronaldo....you're saying Ronaldo was not fit enough to last even the 4 months till Jan when Pato would become eligble. Ergo we shoulda bought a top notch forward. Then what happens to Pato??

I thought it was obvious to everyone, that Pato was Silvio's answer to Sheva leaving. Sheva came when he was 17. Pato is here now. Sheva was under the shadow of Bierhoff and Weah(was it?) ...and now Pato under Pippo and R99.

Nope to go with your argument...that R99 is so injury prone..a player who's so untrustworthy would have to be sold right?? I mean if he's never fit to play for you...then what??

Alright, maybe you're suggesting sell Gila, leaving us with R99,Pippo,<insert forward>,Pato(in Jan)! We'd still be in the same mess...if this hot new forward didnt work out.

All I'm saying is we can all sit back and claim this forward or this one wouldrevolutionize things, but till he takes to the pitch and lives up to the billing, you won't know for sure. Quagliarella?? Gila was even bigger than this guy....bigger than Suazo.

Shevchenko was 22 years old when he joined Milan. And yes, Bierhoff and Weah were are solutions back then.

As for Gilardino - you have a point on saying we should keep him, but only till we find someone else IMO. Yes he was bigger then Quagliarella or Suazo, but how often does it happen that you buy a real solid/good potential for big money and he fails? To Chelsea every year, but to Milan not that often.

Who is Max?

Ambrosini if I'm not wrong,..
Let's call him Amrosini or Ambro,..

I expect galliani's been working on this and he has a solution - to bring back franco Baresi

Oh, and when Dida get's banned by UEFA Seb Rossi will cover goal

No money spent, job's a good 'un

Well it is true that Buffon was on the verge of joining us last season!

In fact, Buffon kept the Juve management and tifosi in the dark about his decision to continue with Juve, until we won the CL. When that happened, Berlusconi had to renew Dida's contract, not because it was cheaper, but because he helped his team win the cup!

This is a real life team, not FM07

help us win? he helped us lose and almost get us eliminated.

dudek was amazing in the final but they dint allow thet ffect their decision to get a new keeper because he was allowing a lot of weak goals in addition to some good performances.

would you say pool are better offf with dudek or reina?

Spot on.

Did you not get the hint when Buffon said "I want to pay CL football" knowing full well Juve won't have any this year?

Dida was the one who kept everyone in the dark with his shall I shant I attitude towards signing his extension. I don't now whether Galliani persuaded him to re-sign but if he did then it was the worst days work he has done

And yet again we shoot ourselves in the foot by extending old players contracts instead of letting them go.

That doesn't make sense... I agree with bigmacmtl completely on this!

that's right, but Milan is classy, and a part of our classyness is, that we treat our players like humans, not numbers, places, statistics...

Milan family *sighs* In good and bad times