The Quiet Offseason of A.C. Milan

The rumors fly­ing around the Inter­net recently have been focused on the makeup of the 2010–2011 Inter squad.  Will Balotelli move to Man­ches­ter or Lon­don (or Madrid)?  Will Maicon reunite with his for­mer man­ager?  At some point I think every player on the ros­ter has been rumored to move to another club.

But what’s inter­est­ing is that this off­sea­son it’s Inter Milan, and not AC Milan, that is dom­i­nat­ing the trans­fer sto­ries.  Sil­vio Berlusconi’s club is famous for lav­ish­ing poten­tial play­ers with grand tours of the facil­i­ties, bring­ing max­i­mum pub­lic­ity to the club and its deal­ings so that it is hard to read any Serie A site with­out see­ing an update on Milan.  They always tar­get the high-profile play­ers, bring­ing in the Ronaldinho’s of the world in their eter­nal quest to dom­i­nate the Ital­ian soc­cer scene or at least the Ital­ian soc­cer press.

The lack of big-splash sign­ings are a prod­uct of numer­ous fac­tors, but the biggest may be the behind-the-scenes in-fighting in the orga­ni­za­tion over money.  Berlus­coni con­tin­ues to be dogged by rumors he is sell­ing the club, despite issu­ing state­ments say­ing he will con­tinue to own it.  It has become appar­ent that money is an issue for the orga­ni­za­tion, with AC Milan say­ing it will not pay full price for Ibrahi­movic in a poten­tial trans­fer from Barcelona.  This could of course be a nego­ti­at­ing ploy, but I have my doubts as the club has sug­gested even poten­tially doing a (gasp!) loan deal for the striker!

It doesn’t hurt that the influ­ence of Adri­ano Gal­liani, the club’s vice pres­i­dent, may be wan­ing.  The two are at odds over whether Ranald­inho is leav­ing, with the owner pub­licly say­ing the Brazil­ian can leave if the price is right.  After set­tling on a third man­ager in three years Berlus­coni may think it is time to make some replace­ments at the top.

Regard­less, AC Milan par­ti­sans are angry over the lack of action a year after the club fin­ished third in Serie A.  How­ever, are they cor­rect?  Is AC Milan worse off than they were at the end of the sea­son? It begins with their new man­age­r­ial hire Mas­si­m­il­iano Alle­gri.  Look­ing at Allegri’s career reminds me of col­lege foot­ball coach Brian Kelly, a man who improves every squad he coaches regard­less of the level.  Three sea­sons ago Alle­gri guided Sas­suolo to their first ever pro­mo­tion to Serie B, then twice won the best man­ager award (Panchina d’Oro) in Serie A for Cagliari.  After try­ing a man­ager with no pre­vi­ous Serie A expe­ri­ence, Milan is wise to choose a man­ager with some track record of success.

On the player side, rumors are fly­ing (Clint Dempsey in, Ronald­inho and Hunte­laar out?) but there has been very few actual trans­fers.  One deal they did make was sign­ing a co-ownership deal with Genoa for keeper Marco Amelia after sell­ing Marco Storari to Juven­tus.  Amelia is com­pe­ti­tion with Abbiati who has been ok but not dom­i­nant, and the 28 year-old Roman has a lit­tle national team expe­ri­ence.  Besides Storari Milan have not lost many play­ers, but have rid them­selves of Mancini and Mat­teo Darmian.

For fans used to an active trans­fer mar­ket this Milan team seems to be set­ting itself up for fail­ure.  But the upgrade on the bench will help pro­vide sta­bil­ity to the squad — hope­fully no more for­ma­tion shifts mid-season.  Also, if Ronald­inho and Hunte­laar are shipped out, the squad will suf­fer offen­sively but it is not an insur­mount­able loss.  Dominic Adiyiah (he of the Suarez “Hand of God 2″), Pato and Inza­ghi are a good start up front, and if AC Milan is smart it is look­ing for one more start­ing striker.  In short, this team is not far away from con­tention for a scud­etto — I would start wor­ry­ing a month from now if this club is the same but not yet.

Tagged as: AC Milan, Adriano Galliani, Cagliari, Inter Milan, Klaas-Jan Huntelaar, Maicon, mancini, Marco Amelia, Mario Balotelli, Massimiliano Allegri, Ronaldinho, Silvio Berlusconi, storari, Zlatan Ibrahimovic