The law is an *** regardless. FFP is BS.

No argument here.



The base principle is only spend what you generate. Maybe it's not well implemented but the base idea is supposed to mean fair play rather than spending what money your owners personally have?

Which gives more power to the strong and weakens the weak. FFP has been proven ineffective since clubs like PSG and City have been spending gazillions of money in the last few years and still have gotten away with it.

So Conte nabbed up by Inter, while we're linked with absolute nobodies.

Don't get me wrong, I absolutely didn't want him, but I sure as sh*t don't want the mediocrity we're being linked to.

Inzaghi? Giampaolo?

This is back to the Miha/Montella era, if indeed, we're even out of that one.

We need a really top quality manager, but unfortunately we neither have the finance, reputation nor ambition to get him.

tbh, I'd even be willing to take Jose - his best spell in football was at Inter, and he knows how to play the kind of Catenaccio we need to go back to.

Back to the drawing board for Milan. Ambitions of CL, challenging for Serie A and the likes are shelved.

The club have a new strategy, one put forward last by Silvio and Galliani, to focus on youth, to balance the books and to operate within the clubs financial capacity. Responsibly.

That means Milan are to downsize. Unlike the path Li initiated, Milan are now going to spend what they earn. From the looks of it, Milan needs to sell to get ride of the high salaries. Players like Suso and Donna, Calhanoglu and Silva will have to move on to raise at least 100M to be good with UEFA and plug in a small transfer kitty to fix some gaps. Then the ultimate focus is developing the youth.

So you are looking at 4-5 years of development before anything bears fruit.

Add to that a new stadium (either San Siro gets a revamp or completely new site), which would put a dent to the clubs already tight financials and extend the waiting time for the fans.

Oh happy days

It's basically designed to keep those at the very top there and to leave all the rest behind.

Here's why it's BS.

EPL TV money alone will leave everyone else in the dust. Real and Barcelona being the only exceptions to this.

Add to that, clubs like City and PSG using the sponsorship loophole R7 rightly explained to pump cash into the clubs to make them look healthy.

FFP was created to regulate club spending so there aren't and financial bankruptcies supposedly, but what it has mostly done is create a top tier of clubs which are impenetrable due to their particular circumstances, and a huge gap between them and the rest has been created. I personally don't think that UEFA should be interfering in these matters. This should be up to the ruling body of the clubs' country. And UEFA should butt out of it.

FFP has been flawed from the start and either needs to be drastically changed or abolished


As for Milan, a week has gone by and I'm still completely disillusioned by this club. And losing Leanardo on top of that has made it worse

I simply do not understand why we're hitting the reset button again when we were 1 single point away from our goal. It just makes no sense

And to top it off we're being linked to mid-table coaches while Inter got Conte and it's seriously heart breaking at this point

Because, Han, this club and this team is absolute garbage. Papering over that with being one point behind the 'elite' isn't enough.

I don't necessarily think 'resetting' again is overly ideal either, but all I know is our present course is going nowhere.

I think Milan's glory days are gone. I think it will be half a century before this club is back at the top of the food chain. maybe never. Look at Nottingham Forest, Leeds and Villa. All of them were European giants, English champions, you name it 30+ years ago. All are as good as dead now, and Villa only just scraped their way back to EPL this season.

Nah, Milan are gone and there's no bringing them back. Not any time in what counts reasonably as 'soon'.

I'll still keep an eye out for their progress but unless their matches are on live tv and I've got a space in my schedule I won't be watching much. My interactions will mostly be on here.

Understood. It really boils down to scaling back to what you can afford. Silvio did well to sell the club, Elliott put in just 300M to get Milan, and that in the space of less than a year.

Elliott will start getting Milan’s financials in order and then find a buyer.

The club is in transition and I totally understand when you say you wont be tuning in because there is not much to look forward to to be honest.

To go from the Kings of Europe and top four or two in Serie A to something that is struggling to be at the level of Atalanta (ok, they were third but they've been on the rise for seasons - wonder how Kessie, Jack and Conti feel) - Milan are going the other way.

Even Inter, while not their traditional selves, have ambition and the appointment of a dynamic coach. Plus UCL football next season.

What do we have? UEL and an outgone youth coach.

What a catch!

I personally think we were a winger away from CL this season, had we managed to bring in that kind of player we'd be there now

Is the team as is good enough to compete in the CL and make a top 4 finish again next year? Probably not, but CL would have been the catalyst for making further important changes to the team

Pressing the reset button now when we were so close imo is a big mistake. Especially if you're going to replace Rino who all the players loved judging by their farewell messages to him with a mid-table coach like Giampoalo is not only pressing the reset button but also hitting reverse.

Same for losing Leo. even if Maldini replaces him in that position, Paolo has no where near the experience and connections Leo had

Indeed, loosing Leonardo will hurt us I think. As for Gattuso, we need a different kind of coach. We tried to give our best last season and have gone all hearts but little brains in. The season wasn't particularly good, especially since we had so much help from all the competition: Roma had a terrible season, Lazio went up and down and wasn't prepared at all to take the 4th spot. Inter also played very erratic. No, sorry, I do blame Gattuso for many mistakes this season. I know the players liked him, but it's not nearly enough.

Giampaolo would be a damn disaster. I really hope we dodge that bullet.

One more thing... is the option of Milan leaving Europe still on the table?

Assuming that we can get any of the available coaches. Is the only option is Mourinho?

Inzaghi could be an option and I rate him over Giampaolo at any time. Why do we really even bother considering him? I'd rather take Frank Rijkaard who hasn't coached for years (a proper team) over him.

Jardim was linked to Milan, but that seems to be not happening. Why not try out Laurent Blanc? Or someone with more experience: perhaps even Claudio Ranieri?

Why do we keep going after mediocre coaches? Why the f*ck can't we sign a decent coach for once?

Giampaolo is Maldini choice I believe or that is what's circulating in the media at least.

Well all good coaches want CL football. And who in your opinion is decent but not mediocre nowadays?

Can't stand the man but I'd say he's the only choice. No one can make us play defensive winning football like he would.

It didn't suit Utd or Madrid hence he 'failed' there, but Chelsea, Inter and Porto? Perfect.

If this club went all out to get the man, I'd pay attention.

I'd say all good coaches want a project they can buy into. Be it UEL or UCL. Or neither.

Mourinho's stock is bad right now, and he has everything to prove.

Just like Milan.

It could work.

Would be a horrific and 'MontMiha'-esque choice.

I liked Rino too, but a Milan manager he never was. I basically lost interest in us when Montella became Rino - and the disgusting Higuain/Bonucci era was upon us.

That was a Milan I hated. Sorry, but I did. Two Juve rejects using us as a way to get their careers going again. I loathed everything about that time.

Wouldn't he demand a transfer kitty? After all isn't he famous for coining the phrase `No eggs, no omelettes. ... They are class one, two or three and some are more expensive than others and some give you better omelettes. When the class one eggs are not available you have a problem`

Last I checked Chelsea were in the EL when they signed Sarri.

He did say 'decent'...

He would. We wasted how much in the summer of 2017? And we still have enough money to buy one or two quality players like a Piatek etc.

If we can scrimp together a budget approaching 50M-100M and sell a lot of the trash we have we could have enough for him to work with.

All he needs is a few key players - look at the absolute pennies he had at Inter in 2008. He barely acquired a single half decent player yet turned that lot into the kings of Europe. Same with Porto.

The man has been a miracle worker in his career, but only in the right environment. And Italy definitely suits him.

Sarri is not decent?

If we do sell Donna and a couple of others he might have something to work with. But the strategy of the club is to focus on youth and homegrown players. Hence why I have a doubt on Mourinho coming in.

We'll see I guess

You say that but the UEL was the first thing this guy has ever won. At 60. 30 years as a manager.

Not exactly the winning kind of manager we need. He only barely scraped past an abysmal Spurs and Arsenal with a far superior squad.

I am being a bit harsh on him, he was amazing at Napoli, but then Napoli have and had a world class squad. And he also had Higuain and Mertens.

Don't think he's the right fit for us given his style tbh.

The club has history for making up 'youth projects' as a byword for not having a plan at all.

Oh, I meant to point out:

Mike is clearly gone from this forum. But he's also seemingly paying the bills still. Which begs the notion that this forum is going to vanish without trace one day and there'll be nowhere for us.

We need a plan B otherwise this place will be gone and for the majority there'll be no alternative.

That's it isn't it. Berlusconi and Galliani put the club on that track before it was sold as the only viable means to meet FFP. Then Li came in and overpaid, overpaying lead the club to fall under FFP scrutiny. So back to the youth project.

Its not about not having a plan, just that it won't be the same Milan we grew up with. That is all

FI states that Milan five year losses amount to 413M euros. This season alone Milan lost 100M.

So what are viable options and future paths for Milan?

I'd like to reiterate this. One day you'll try to come on and it'll be a 404.

Get m1ke to pay the bills?

Danny I think we should have a WhatsApp group instead of the forum. Not sure what is going on with Mike and how the site is being catered to.

Not everyone uses WhatsApp - I won't touch it, for one, but Pippo did refer to an idea ike that a few years ago.

The issue with a phone app is it's not as good for typing into - look at Han's Tolstoy-esque posts on here, just can't do that on a phone. I'm at a full-sized keyboard for this and that's good to get all the ideas I have about Milan (and everything else) out on.

A phone keyboard just doesn't give that freedom.

But, that said, if we all wanted to do that, it's an idea - but we'd need to agree on which app to use.

I would go along with WhatsApp. And you can download a version that runs on your PC.

EDIT: Discourse (or Slack) are probably better options, though.

Slack works too!

I heard the pc version sucks? Do the other two have PC incarnations as well. I have a mate who's obsessed with all these apps in trying to find one that suited everyone. He failed

Slack is website based, used it on a project the team was working on when we were across continents.

Its free, you could give it a go now and see how it feels.

Used Slack at work. It is free, but you only see the last 10k messages (to see all your messages you have to pay). Slack has phone and PC versions, and they sync up quite well. Was an instant success at work (where it replaced Jabber, which is not that great), and we reached 10k in less than one month.

Discourse is very much like Slack, except it is free (looks the same to me, and my son claims it is the same thing). Apparently, it is real popular in the gaming world. I am less familiar with Discourse, but I can ask my son to help (I think he set up Slack at his work).

WhatsApp for PC is not that bad, and it syncs up nicely with the phone (in fact, you need to have your phone on your WiFi or it will not work at all). Slack is much better than WhatsApp (and probably the same goes for Discourse as well), and you can set up "channels" for different topics.

Would it be possible to pay some small fee like through patreon or something just to pay the bills? I really don't know how much it costs to keep this place afloat but I would pay a fee to make sure this place stays alive at least in some form.

I would go along with Patreon. Have sponsored other initiatives there in the past. But someone at MF would have to set this up.

I will also ask my son what it would take to set up Discourse. I think that would be free and relatively easy to manage.

I've heard of Patreon, but isn't that a site for hot girls to beg punters for money?

Yeah.

It is used for other more legit things as well :-)

A bit late, to the mix, does Reddit allow you to do a private group thing?

Let's face it, forums in this form are a dying breed, and Danny is right, we don't know if m1ke will one day get fed up and the lights go off permanently here

Don't know about Reddit, not a big fan of the UI. I have recently set up Slack for family and friends, but I think Discord would be better for a forum.