Thursday Milan Musings: A Little Bit of Logic

By: Gianfranco | July 17th, 2008

Day three of the Ronaldinho era, and as I write this post I am watching Milan vs. ManU in the 07 CL semifinal. I always watch this game when I want to feel better because well it is everything that is good about Milan in 90 minutes. Nesta, Paolo, Kaka and Seedorf tearing it up, hell even Dida was on his game this match, though he effed up in the first leg.

What I still am having a hard time with though is no longer Ronaldinho, but the Milan management and their inability to evolve and progress into the modern era of football. I will say that I want Dinho to succeed, I want to be proved wrong, and I want him to return to the top of the world and take the club with him, but you have to understand my skepticism, we have benn burned before and I don’t feel all that much like being burned again.

My major gripe with the management and transfer gurus is that they don’t seem to understand the needs of the club anymore and in fact would rather make a big splash signing to shut us, the fans, up for a moment and help lull us into forgetting what in fact this team really needs. I want to do a little exercise to help manifest my point and I am going to do so with no names to help really hammer the point home, and remove us from any preconceived notions regarding any specific players.

Milan went into this offseason with an aging team with the oldest position being defense and making its way forward to the strikers. There was also a need for a proven GK to fill the hole left by the former number one. So we will start with that, instead of buying an expensive GK, Milan returned one that they owned, who had success before, therefore making an intelligent move. That leaves them with the need for a defender, player D, and a seasoned capable striker, that we will call player S.

The current roster was midfield heavy, yet we decided to added player M to add depth and youth, and one can consider this a smart move all around based on price and availability. So we continue to move forward in the transfer market and begin courting Player S, neglecting to even address the need for Player D.

Player S becomes available but not without a price and “small” amount of risk. Player D is not even on the radar, but the club has a hankering for a new player, Player R. Player R is not addressing the needs of the club and does not come for that much less of price than Player S, yet Milan abandon all hope for player S, pursue and succeed in the purchase of player R. Leaving the need for both Player S and Player D unaddressed, now to make matters worse, continue without names (no preconceived notions) player R had fallen out of favor at his old club and was not even playing and the end of the season while Player S had the best campaign of his career. What do you do then given those circumstances?? You would be hard pressed to pick Player R, no?

Know we all know that by looking at it this way a rational person would have to go ahead and choose player S. He addresses a need of the club and has more upside, based on form correct?

Now if you add in the players that we all I know am talking about, for some reason Ronaldinho gets the benefit of the doubt and joins the club despite the fact that he doesn’t address the needs of the club, or help the club in the long term. I did this to show that if you had to make this determination without and background and history of players it makes even harder to swallow the Dinho move when you look at the needs of the club. Imagine your significant other sending you to the grocery with a list containing milk, eggs, and bread. Yet you decide to come home with a pizza, what does she say to you? You will probably get a funny look no? Welcome to the look that has been plastered on my face for three days…

Again, I wanted to do this to just show how disappointed I am in the lack of real intelligent decisions from really intelligent guys who know what they are doing at least 75% of the time. I will also say again that I want to be proved wrong, I want to be proved every single Sunday in the Serie A, and every single game in the UEFA Cup, but right now I am still not convinced and it will take a fair amount of time for me to get there…