Just some tidbits that popped up on Football-Italia.








More than the takeover going through, I'm interested to see who they bring in as staff. I would be really interested to see how this works out.

Mediaset says Silvio hasn't agreed to sell the club or part of the shares, but rather has agreed to consider such a possibility and is examining who the Chinese-American group might propose as possible investors. They also say that Jack Ma is not part of the group.

Silvio is keen on selling the club, has been for a while. Problem is he is not receiving the valuation he deems acceptable. issue with that is Milan's valuation today is lower than it was two years ago and significantly lower two years prior and so on and so forth.

On the investor's side, football in Italy is not a profitable prospect. The investor could have other motives other than profit when initiating to buy Milan. And the valuation will be determine whether a deal can be made or not.

On the profitability front, Milan without CL can NOT maintain this squad, let alone bring in somebody new. So if somebody does not buy into the club its just a downward spiral with Silvio plugging the holes here and there (when permitted by FFP).

Sooner, rather then later.

I don't buy it that for investors the Serie A is not profitable. Certainly Ligue 1 isn't any more profitable yet the sheikhs made PSG a powerhouse using their own ways through sponsorship deals and whatnot.

The problem is that Silvio doesn't want to sell a majority share. He still wants to own the club and be the president, using foreign investors only as a means of injecting cash. For some investors this might not be an ideal solution.

In the end, we're still slaves to Silvio's egotistic demands. Any wise businessman would have sold this club at the first chance and be done with it.

Naah man, Serie A isn't attractive enough, or else various Fiorentina's and Lazio's would have become powerhouses.

Still, the PSG argument still holds as Ligue 1 is a far less attractive league and PSG was still bought and turned into a major European player.

I can understand that argument when looking at a Man City for example because EPL clubs are lucrative.

Exactly.

How does it hold?

With Ligue 1 you have: 1) Paris - which is both an attractive venue, especially for sheik's who deal with the Parisians there for centuries, whereas Italy never is such a pleasant place to be, 2) with PSG you have a sure thing in your pocket, because the league has no competitiveness at all.

With Serie A you get the "worst of all worlds", because you have many rivalries, stubborn owners, you still have the FIAT-Juventus factor, you have big taxes and no financial nexus like with the Primera, you have old infrastructure and 50% hostile environments. All in all, nothing near what offers Paris.

Two factors I'd put in favour of Paris were:

No rival teams. It's a one club city practically.

The stadium

Both of these Milan can't provide. Also I think they snapped up PSG pretty cheap I think. And the relative uncompetitive nature of the league means PSG is guaranteed Champions League almost every year.

Not the same with clubs in other leagues that have two or three strong teams.

CorSera: Silvio Berlusconi has decided to sell Milan to the Chinese consortium and wants the deal to be closed by the 30th May.

That decision came just after today's game?

It is todays news but I read it before the game. I was browsing the thread just now and thought to share it. Cheers

I was just kidding.

Great. Would be a good move, really.

Let's see, we've been duped before, first with Bee and now all these conflicting reports about the Chinese. Hope that if Silvio does sell up this will FINALLY be the end of Galliani being the decision maker, and that the club will go into good hands and we don't go from the frying pan and into the fire which is what I think Bee would have been but Silvio was choosing him because he accepted to take just the minority stake while allowing B & G to still run this circus act

I dont know which one I want more, Berlusconi selling or Galliani leaving. I really think that the new owner should make fundamenal changes in the club personel. And whoever comes, I hope he has a very good coach with him to bring in San Siro, we cant keep appointing people like Inzaghi, Brochi and so one as coaches.

I wouldn't imagine that any major share holders would stand for Galliani keeping his place, they'd want to bring in their own people. So the most important thing that can happen to Milan atm is Silvio selling, because as long as he's there Galliani will also be there. His own daughter tried with all her might to push Galliani out and was unsuccessful, if she couldn't do it then the only way for it to happen is if Silvio is no longer a part of the picture either.

As for coaches, Pellgerini is being mentioned a lot, don't know how to feel about it, I think he's a good coach, but no one that really gets me excited or anything

Who get's you excited Han?

CorSport: Today in Rome they worked on the last details and the sign of the exclusive negotiations will come in the next 24-48 hours. The buyers are Evergrande group and Jack Ma (as a financial partner).

CorSport also reports that the Chinese will invest €300m in the first season and that everything will be closed in the late June.

Sky: If Berlusconi decide to sign the exclusive negotiations with Chinese, then all the decision will be frozen, for example Montolivo's renewal and Brocchis future. The things will be like this for a month.

According to TMW, Berlusconi has decided to sell majority of Milan, it will be 51% and he want to stay as honorary President. TMW says the offer from Chinese is 700m + debts. Berlusconi does not want to invest in Milan, after this unsuccessful year.The first priority of the new investors would be to build a new stadium.

So Pellegrini is a name that gets YOU excited?

Like I said, he's a good coach but he's more of a practical option rather than an adventurous one. Obviously I'd be happy with him as he's a major upgrade over the last 5 coaches we've had

Well, he has CL experience, he's a solid tactician and a good man-manager. I think he'd do good.

But you dodged the question. Who get's you excited and is free/eager to move to Milan?

I honestly don't know, there are obviously going to be a lot of coaches shifting clubs but they all seem to have set destinations in mind.

Like I said, I think Pellegrini is good, and he's practical, because I think he'll bring that shift in the team but he's not really a Carlo, Mourinho, Guardiola level manager either imo

1 guy I've always wanted to see at Milan is Hiddink though, don't know what he'll be doing after his time at Chelsea is up

Man, I really don't see what you see in Hiddink. For me he's always been a perfect small team manager who achieves. And also, his time clearly passed.

Well I've personally always rated him

And if things fall through with the Chinese he'd be the perfect coach for us since we've basically turned into a mid-table team nowadays.

If the top players aren't coming then we need someone who can get the best from what we have and Hiddink imo is one of the best at doing just that

I really don't know Han. It's one of your fixations. Hiddink is 70 years old, never coached in Serie A, never been linked with Milan, hasn't been particularly good as a coach for years now. Really don't see what would be so good about him.

Which coach, depends on what strategy the (new?) management follows?

Do we like Dortmund, hire a young exciting coach like Klopp and then support him patiently so he builds a project? Or do we do like other moneyed clubs and quickly build a team to challenge.

All of that will determine what direction to take.

For me, I'm all in favour of Pellegrini. He will bring in a stability and a maturity that we desperately need after all these years of failed experiments. He has a good eye for players. Is a decent tactician and has managed clubs that are not stacked with superstars and still got performances from them. Language is the only barrier here though.

Tuttosport: The Chinese want to give Maldini an important role at Milan, like Nedved at Juventus.

Official : Fininvest confirms that have reached an agreement with a group of Chinese investors to continue the negotiations of selling a PART of Milan.


https://scontent-vie1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0...amp;oe=579F35C3

The Chinese group is Jack Ma's group, aka Ali Baba Group. Both Silvio and Jack have been negotiating for over a year now.

It's reported Silvio wants to sell all of Milan, but the Chinese want him to retain part ownership otherwise the deal will not be made. This could mean one of two things (maybe both); Silvio's management to remain with final approvals coming from China and/or that the Chinese require Silvio's political/social/cultural/etc perks.

All transfer negotiations have been put on hold till the deal is finalized. Think we finally are about to be introduced to our new majority owner.

Enter BIG money Milan.

What's Ma's estimated net worth?

I don't understand how the media is saying Silvio has been negotiating for an entire year considering the Bee fiasco last summer.

It's all speculation at this point.

I don't know his networth, but bee was representing them. The deal is coming to a close, that's why all these names are coming out now.

Soon there will be new owners.

I've heard it isn't the Ali Baba group, rather the Evergrande group. Jack Ma happens to be a partner in Evergrande.

This is a trend now of Chinese consortiums having investments in football clubs in China, now partnering with European clubs. Provides them an easy access to talent I guess. Now past-it footballers in Europe instead of heading to USA or the Middle East might head to China.

I understand it's an exclusivity agreement signed so far and that the due diligence has just started.

Rumours are the majority stake will be sold by Silvio for 550 million, with the agreement that the new owner will agree to pay off the 250 million debt as well.

So what you're saying is that Bee was an intermediary and this is still the same deal?

Because I think Bee was also given exclusivity a few months ago and it fell through IIRC

I believe Bee was more of a broker than anything else. He had little money of his own. However the new intermediaries are very reputed people in the sports business.

Jack Ma heads Ali Baba group and has a personal net worth of 23 billion dollars. But Milan's interested buyers are rumoured to be Evergrande group- China's second largest property developers and owners of Guangzhou Evergrande FC (the team Marcello Lippi coached back in China and 5 time consecutive league winner of Chinese super league). Jack Ma holds a minority stake in the Evergrande company. The majority owner is Xu Jiayin with a personal networth of 4.9 billion dollars.
Source: Wikipedia articles browsed at work.

Yup. As Jack pointed out below, he was nothing more than a broker.

The deal has changed from what it was back then. Back then the deal was for Berlusconi to retain majority. This one is where the Chinese become the majority and clear all debts.

They might be two different deals. But knowing Berlusconi's personality (as we all are aware after years of dealing with him) coupled with the character of his Chinese counterpart(s); I'm not at all surprised it lasted a season for their egos to be filled and get this done.

My only hope is that Milan is taken care of by the right people. Money alone

Let's hope so, I thought the Bee thing just didn't make any sense at all considering the quoted amount and the fact that it was for a minority share.

I think there's something like 3 weeks still left for the due diligence period to be over so let's all cross our fingers that this thing goes through because we simply cannot afford another season with Galliani running things on the transfer side. We need someone who knows what they're doing

"The Chinese want to kick me out," he told reporters at the public get-together...


http://www.football-italia.net/84789/berlu...-stay-president

i really hope they do

I think keeping Berlusconi (without Galliani) wouldn't do much harm.

I actually think the opposite. Surprisingly. I think Galliani is a good negotiator for a rich club.

After last season? No thanks. Berlusconi saved Milan from a downward spiral and achieved great things. He's the clubs most successful president.

But anyway, it seems like everything will remain exactly as it is now. Brocchi coach, Berlu president, Galliani CEO. Great...

That's what I thought as well, but then last summer happened as he squandered 100 million.

Except for Bertolacci all the other transfers were good I thought.

Alex has been good.
Romagnoli has been good.
Antonelli has been good.
Bacca has been good if not spectacular.
Kucka has been a steal.
Bringing back Niang helped a lot. And loaning him out was a wise decision.
Balotelli - was weird. He was injured and then in and out of the team. He never got a consistent run. But it cost us very little.
Luiz Adriano was a coach's decision but he was all of 8 million.

Now Bertolacci - that was the biggest flop. But c'mon. Who saw that coming? I was really excited to see him join. Thought him with Montolivo would finally sort out our midfield. But who knew he was such a mentally weak player.

It's not just about the individuals. It's (once again) completely misdirecting our priorities.

We splashed almost 50% of our budget on strikers: in the end, only Bacca justified the signing, while we virtually had Adriano and Balotelli doing little to nothing. We entered this season with one or even two strikers too many (Niang, Menez, Adriano, Bacca, Balo), once again disregarded the importance of a proper midfield, overpaying Bertolacci.

Once again, I disagree. We knew that Menez would be unavailable till winter at least. We were supposed to play with 2 strikers - even remember Mihajlovic claiming that 4-3-1-2 is the best formation for this team (he got that wrong!) and so for a 2 striker formation we had 4 fit strikers on our roster. Which is not excessive at all.

Balotelli's injury, Niang's freak accident - how do you expect a director to figure this out when making a transfer?

Bertolacci - you say we overpaid for him? But this is based on his performance right? I didn't see that performance coming. I honestly believed he was exactly what our midfield needed. A creative player with good passing ability. He failed. C'est la vie.

Do you think we overpaid for Romagnoli as well? Every team has flops. Man Utd has a Fellaini , Depay and a Falcao. Atletico has a Jackson Martinez. Inter had a Kondgobia , a Jovetic and so on.

We had one bad transfer.

As for our transfer priorities, if we keep changing coach every time Silvio farts, what do you expect?

Bertolacci I'm guessing will be given one more season. Which seems fair. He can't complain he wasn't given a fair run. I just hope the new coach will be sensible enough to make a quick decision on him.

I get your angle, but I'm not quite with you on this.

All in all it's a mess. Thing is, people here at MF (Han, X-O) knew we overpaid him the moment we signed him. Hell, I even felt it deep down, because let's face it, the man didn't exactly warranted his signing fee with last season. He was good in a small team, but nowhere near as good as we made him appear.

You say miscalculations happen. But we're not United or Atletico. The thing is, those clubs splash much more money then we do, they make 5 superb and 1 lousy choice (United maybe not so much lately) and they have still more resources.

We're a limited club, perhaps spending 20M on someone who's actually worth the money or less for a bigger talent would have been logical, no?

Adriano was a completely needless signing. I'm not sure if Miha wanted him or not. At that point, we could have kept SES or brought back Ganz, Petagna or whoever we have on our radar.

My bottom line is: if a team with limited resources decides to break the bank and spent more then usual, it should be done wisely and carefully. If we had problems for the past 2 years, we should have located them with more precision and made our team more compact, more balanced. How do you explain us having 4 center-backs competing for 2 spots? Or starting the season with Noce, NdJ, Kucka and Poli all in for one or maybe two spots? While at the same time other positions show great deficiencies.

And don't get me started with the completely useless yet typical tactic of signing players like Balotelli, Boateng, etc. Getting rid of the "last years mistakes" only to fill up the roster with new ones...

Man, if someone who doesn't follow the Serie A read your post they'd think we've finished 2nd or 3rd with your interpretations.

The only good ones have been Bacca and Romagnoli, and only slightly. Alex good? Antonelli good? Kucka a steal? Niang helped a lot? Let's not joke around. Everyone's been crap, everyone bar Donnarumma, Romangoli, Bonaventura and Bacca. It's the 3rd year in a row that we're finishing 7th or lower, nobody can save themselves. It's been a disgraceful season, and the Coppa final was just a fluke considering we encountered Carpi and frigging Alessandria in the QFs and semis.