Market strategy

In this moment if the year the top players are journalists and press agents because supporters need to dream with some names and inside the media there are a lot of journalist whose jobs is coming up with some "scoop". It doesn't matter if it's a fake news and if most of them are rumored by teams' press agents to improve the image of the club and selling tickets and merchandising for the next season. And everybody knows people need a dream, an idea in his mind, to convince him to buy.

Anyway, we've just passed these weeks reading of how magnificent Is AC Milan and of how many refuses Inter has received from top players.

Now things are clearer, and we can see that Milan hasn't bought anybody so far and we aren't buy 10 players.

Because we don't need them.

As I wrote before, we need two new central defensor and at least one wideback.

And infact we are buying Murillo, Miranda and Zukanovic.

Then, we need a director in the midfield, someone who knows how to filter defensively and direct the flow on the attack.

And we are buying Imbula or Kondogbia.

At the end we'd need a new attacker, maybe someone that could play on the side.

That's why we are thinking about Cuadrado or Salah.

Stop.

With these players we could easily fight for the second/third position. We forget we have players as Shaqiri, Hernanes, Icardi, Handanovic, Brozovic, Kovacic, Medel, Guarin. And Mancini.

Ecentually we must consider today it's the 17th of June and the market will close on the end of August: two months in which everything could happens.

Why we don't need a lot of players

I guess everyone of us has in his eyes what kind of players AC Milan is about to buy, on the other hand everyone of us has in his eyes our terrible last season.

But...

But there is a bigdifference between our and their seasons.

With Mancini we have changed our games and we have played a good soccer even without Shaqiri (he's a top player), Santon (he's our best wing), a good midfielder in the middle (Medel can't start the action) and, moreover, without a defense. We have lost a lot of point for mistakes of Ranocchia and Juan, without them our position could be much better.

Our situation isn't so desperate.

Starting from the top.

GOALKEEPER: if we confirmed Handanovic, we'd have a top player here. Good.

DEFENSE: it's the sector we must reinvent. We need the best Vidic and a new defensor beside him. Maybe if this is fast. We have bought Murillo and the couple Vidic-Murillo is much more better than the Ranocchia-Juan one. 

On the wings. Santon is ok, so we need a new player on the other side (D'Ambrosio could be fine, but we'd need someone better with him on the bench with Nagatomo). It'd be the best if this could also play in the middle (one as Chivu used to be).

Sellings: Andreolli, Juan or Ranocchia, Campagnaro, Jonatan

MIDFIELD: it depends on the tactic Mancini wants to use. 4-2-3-1? 4-3-3? 4-4-2? Anyway, we need a player that knows how to manage situations, start new actions, a director. Touré? Motta?Kondogbia? I don't kowbut we need this kind of players because we already have who could run for two (Medel), a jolly (Brozovic, Guarin and Kovacic).

ATTACK: we have found back Hernanes, Shaqiri is a top player that we have seen only rarely, Palacio will be phisically fine without the World Cup, Icardi is a sniper.

Probabily we need someone to replace Palacio and Icardi.

Eventually we'd need a new defensor, a top player in the middle and a good attacker (a wing for the 4-2-3-1 or 4-3-3). Stop. Everything we'll buy more, or better, is welcome, but this is the minimum we really need.

Handanovic

X - Vidic - MURILLO - Santon

X - Medel (Guarin, Brozovic)

Shaqiri - Hernanes - Palacio (X)

Icardi

Give this team to Mancini, avoid the mistakes of positioning and marking of Juan and Ranocchia and we'll be anle to fight to enter in the Champion's League.

We don't forget that we are in Italy where Lazio has arrived in the third position with players like Parolo, Djordevic, de Vriji etc., players that we'd consider as a failure.

We already have good players as Guarin, Hernanes, Vidic, Shaqiri, Santon, Handanovic, Icardi, Palacio, Brozovic. Waiting for the real Kovacic...

The next Serie A at today

Writing about the new Serie A the 10th of June could be crazy because the market will close at the end of August, but let's play to imagine what could be the next Serie A at the moment.
JUVENTUS: It starts from the final of the Champions' League and from the victories in Coppa Italia and Campionato, but it has also bought two good players as Dybala and Khedira.
Probabily they will lose Tevez and Pogba, but they will be sold for a lot of milions of euros and those milions will be used to buy new fantastic players, maybe even better than these two. Naingolaan, for example, could cover easily the hole let by Pogba.
MILAN: It comes from two dramatic seasons and it needs to rebuild the team completely. Galliani is starting from the attack and his idea is to buy Ibrahimovic and Jackson Martinez. Then he'll have to buy someone else in the midfield because it can't continue with Montolivo, De Jong, Poli, Muntari, but behind Mr. Bee there is Doyen sports that takes care of interests for many good players. One of these is Kondogbia, and he'll be perfect for Milan. Something good must be done also in the defense because it's impossible to continue with Bonera, Mexes and so on, but Galliani has finally a lot of money to spend and I'm sure he'll build a good team.
LAZIO: It's always a mistery, but it starts from a good team built by Stefano Pioli month after month. I don't know which kind of players Tare could buy, it's too soon. Probabily Lotito is going to wait to know if Lazio will participate to the next Champion's League or not.
ROME: The feeling is that the environment is about to explode, and the possible loss of Naingolaan could be a good shock against the chance to stay for Garcia. Sabatini must do much more better than how it did last two market sessions. Last summer he spent a lot of money to buy Iturbe and on the last session he spent money to buy Ibarbo and Doumbia, players too poor to improve the situation of a team that has arrived second for two seasons.
INTER: We only have a true: Roberto Mancini is the guy who created the team that won everything on the last decade. Thanks to him we bought players as Maicon, Julio Cesar, Maxwell, Cambiasso, and so on, so he knows how to come back to the victory. The problem is that he'd like to buy top players but these cost too much or are happy where they star.
Yayà Touré? No, thank you.
Kondogbia? Too expensive and if must move he will go to AC Milan.
Kolarov? Too expensive.
Benatia? Too expensive.
And so on.
At now we only have Murillo that we don't know, but he can't be worse than Juan Jesus so it's already an improvement.
The breaking news today is our interested for Perisic of Wolfsburg, but I know that nobody really believes on this.

Juventus has already completed his market and it's stronger than before.
Milan is negotiating a lot of top players thanks to Mr. Bee's money.
Rome, Inter and Lazio are in confusion, or, maybe, are "Under construction".
Cross fingered!

Milan and Mr. Bee

I've lived the news about the acquisition of a minority part of the property of AC Milan quietly. I think a good competition requires good competitors and if Juventus has found in the new Stadium a good source of resources while Inter and Rome are trying to improve their brands with a new economic approach, it's good that Milan and Silvio Berlusconi have found a new partner to make more competitive their team.
That's only a few things that aren't clear on me.

1) The Milan value
Every newspaper in Italy talk about sums of money as if we lived in a world with only one currency.
According to Forbes (1) the value of Milan is $775M.
According to some newspaper (2) the 48% of Milan has been sold for €480M.
This only means that Berlusconi is a financial master and Mr. Bee and his partners aren't so smart as they think. Why? With the actual currency rate, 775 milions of dollars are around 687 milions of euros. While 480 milions of euros are around 541 milions of dollars.
This means that, according to Forbes, the value for the 48% of Milan is about $372M (329 milions of euros). Paying €480M Mr. Bee and his partner have paid the 48% more than the real value of the company.

2) Thinking as an investor
Financially speaking there are other simple questions: AC Milan has a revenue of €250M (and without the Champions' League is possible that this amount will drop), a percentage of debt/value of 44%, it needs frequent ricapitalizations and, furthermore, it doesn't have its own Stadium. Thinking as an investor, why should I pay an huge amount of money, moreover paying the 48% more than the real financial value, to have the minority in the company?
Let's imagine we are in the boardroom and we must take a decision for improve the incomes.
I have just invested €480M and I think we must organize a tour in China with the first team on Christmas, beacuse with this act AC Milan could improve the prestige of its brand and could sell a lot of merchandising and I could earn a lot of money with some satellite activities, but in the boardroom Berlusconi stops my idea because he doesn't like it. Is that possible? Yes, it is.

Carlo Festa (3), a "Sole24ore" journalist, wrote something similar: «The only reason I found is that in the contract exists some put call options to put Mr. Bee in the majority in one year. Without this provision, 480M spent to buy the 48% of Milan doesn't make any sense, financially speaking».

3) Why Milan?
In this particular moment, a lot of big society can be bought with less than €480M. I mean, the 100% of them. According to Forbes, we can see that teams like Inter, Atletico de Madrid, Napoli, Galatasaray have a value lower than that sum, but a lot of other teams aren't in the list (there are only the 20 richest companies) and they can be easily bought. So, why do Milan? Why in this moment when the economical situation is very bad and its prestige is getting back to the time before Berlusconi?

Anyway, these are just some questions and Andrea Agnelli, President of Juventus, has shown the some doubts (4): «We read impressive numbers, but we don't know if they are real, and when I see the numbers in the balance sheets I can't see a correspondence with that number».
In the world of business investors make their analysis before proceeding with an acquisition of with a merge so I think this is only the first step towards something that now it's difficult to see if we are not one of them. For the moment, good for Milan supporters because will see good players playing with the rossoneri shirt, and good for the Serie A as well because another competition as the last year isn't desiderable.
We need more stronger competitors to make the Serie A league stronger against the Premier League and the League and investors as Mr. Bee are welcome.

If the agreement with Mr. Bee is real we must admit that this man is a master.

Sources:
(1) http://www.forbes.com/teams/ac-milan/
(2) http://www.gazzetta.it/Calcio/Serie-A/Milan/05-06-2015/milan-blitz-notturno-ad-arcore-mr-bee-ma-silvio-ha-detto-no-offerta-12046027175.shtml
(3) http://carlofesta.blog.ilsole24ore.com/2015/06/07/le-tante-domande-senza-risposta-dellaccordo-bee-berlusconi-sul-milan-e-quei-480-milioni-in-cerca-dautore/
(4) http://www.gazzetta.it/Calcio/Serie-A/Juventus/08-06-2015/agnelli-juve-straordinaria-noi-finali-champions-ci-arriviamo-12080838134.shtml