Every day, Milannews publishes a 'letter to the editor' from a fan. Usually they're all but impossible to read and not really particularly interesting.

Today's is an exception and so I'm going to do my best to translate it here.

link to original. (X-Off, please feel free to correct the translation)

There's not much to add, really. Just... R.I.P.

Whats Silvio expected to say? 'I suck, we suck, theres no money and its all hopeless'? Thats unrealistic. What else could the writer of this article have expected to hear? Certainly not 'Everything just changed overnight and its all good playaaas.' I'm confident in one thing, and thats Silvios pride. If anything he is a man that hates to lose and I am very positive more reinforcements are on the way, as soon as we can get the old guard sold, if we can at all.

I wonder how much it would cost us to just rip up the contract all together. Surely less than their wages next year.

No. You cancel a contract by paying them the remainder of the wages. You can rescind also, if both parties reach an agreement and you pay them a little bit of the total owed wage and you agree to go seperate ways. For this:

1. The club and the player need to be on good terms.
2. The player needs to be confident he will get a playing contract elsewhere soon.
3. The club needs to be willing to forego the chance to earn any transfer fee by making him a free agent.

It's difficult for all three to come together.

As for the letter, bah! It's nothing new. It's the same as everything else. Every fan on one hand wants us to be financially responsible, but wants big superstars at the same time. The trouble is superstars in each person's mind differs. Some want Messi, others want Essien it doesn't matter.

People talk of Dzeko and every player. The thing is what if the superstars flop??? Chelsea bought Sheva and he flopped. But they were Chelsea and could survive. Same with Barca and Chryginisky. If Diego and Amauri don't come good soon, Juve might be in a soup too.

Milan cannot survive something like that.

I don't see Roma pushing like they did last season. That was them getting a second wind. Soon the new-coach magic will wear out..and they'll be in trouble again without finances.

Inter? I'm confident in Benitez. They'll fook up again!

The reality is this:



In order to be a successful club you need the following things (w/o silvio's cash )-


1) A good youth system (We don't have this and our coaches in the youth system are terrible. We have one decent coach and he doesn't actually do any coaching, he's the director. Fillipo Galli)

Countries like Germany, Spain, Belgium, Austria, and co. have over 30, 000 UEFA qualified coaches. England has 3000 and Italy has something like 8000. That right there hurts the country and hurts our club. Just because they were ex-players doesn't mean they are good coaches.

fiorie, abate, costacurta, vecchi etc..., I have no idea what they are doing at our club other than sucking up the wages. Stroppa I won't judge yet because he hasn't really done anything.


2) Financial Stability= This means that our current net gain (160 m or something like that) and our expenses are balanced. Losing 10m or 20m a year isn't bad, its actually normal. I'm talking about losing 100m every year.


Right now this is out of wack at our club. Our wage structure is messed up and we are forced to cut back on our transfer fund to pay players that we don't even use.


Will this get fixed in the future, most probably. I doubt Galliani will ever do what he did again with renewals.


3) Good mgmt staff= This plays a big part in a club and i'm not talking about contract renewals and purchases. I'm talking about advertising, loan deals, sponsorship, friendlies, relationships etc etc.

I feel we were extremely weak in the past in this area and now we are getting better at it. A great example is how barca in 2002 was bringing in a max of 140m a year and now at the end of 2009 they were bringing in around 400m. This is due to a good mgmt providing the list above. A good mgmt can make all the difference.


4) Good coaching/scouting staff= Right now i'd say we have decent staff, not the best not the worst.

Could we do better? Most def but that would require breaking up certain relationships that i'm quite sure galliani wouldn't want to.


5) A good squad= A good squad is the last of the important factors at a club because this changes year to year while the other stay more long term.

Our squad right now is quite poor in terms of our club's standard and until 1-4 are fixed, this will remain the case.

Well, yes. There's always a risk if you pay a lot of money for a new player. Even buying Messi would not be completely riskless. Does that mean one shouldn't try to sign expensive players? And to make Milan a healthy company in financial terms you also need to boost the image of the brand AC Milan. As long as we're not competitive we won't get good sponsorship deals.
The question right now is: What is AC Milan? In the past it was the super club with legendary players like Maldini and Sheva. The club that was a family. I can't see this anymore. What do we want to be in the future? The big club with a decent financial record? That's not very inspirational and not very attractive either, plus Bayern are miles ahead of us in terms of financial records.

Well basically the club is not gonna go for broke in chasing success. That's the attitude. We have to accept it. You heard what Silvio said. Moratti is spending 125% of revenue. That can't be done. At all.

Sounds a lot like last year's groaning, right when I came into things. I think people exaggerate way too much. Would it be great to have a big name acquisition? Sure. If we don't, is it the end of the world? No. The end of the squad? No. Heck, with a healthy Pato or Nesta we could have been reigning Scudetto holders right now. That doesn't mean we can't improve, but the sky isn't falling either.

Besides, I've seen much worse happen in professional sports - like the Florida Marlins (baseball) winning a championship and selling almost all of their stars the next offseason.

Now that we (hopefully) have a proper replacement for Nesta, our defense will survive a Nesta injury.

The problem is that we are becoming the Marlins. Sheva went, then Kaka' and rumours of Pato going to Chelsea. Where has the £75m gone from the Sheva and Kaka' transfers exactly? Paying debts apparently so we can enter the Champions League when the new finance rules come out.. but we won't be qualiying for Champions League football if we don't start spending.