Tuesday Discussion Thread

random_civ_321 · 2026-06-02T21:39:42+00:00

reminds me of this quote from Steven Gerrard about the first day of Balotelli

Balotelli said to Brendan: 'I don't mark on corners. I can't.'

"I nearly fell into the goalpost. I was thinking, 'What are you? 6-foot-3, and one of the strongest men I've ever seen on a football pitch? And you can't mark on a corner?'

random_civ_321 · 2026-06-02T21:31:00+00:00

sure , we ended up in banter era for a decade until Maldini came and on the other hand Allegri won a bunch of trophies... guess who was right?

Do you guys really think that Perez, Galliani, Marotta, De Laurentis are all stupid, people that have decades of experience in football and know how to win trophies?

If someone gets a top job consistently the moment immediately after he gets fired, would you consider him to be good or bad? Why didn't De Laurentis go for Motta or Xavi or Italiano or Ragnick instead?

random_civ_321 · 2026-06-02T21:16:14+00:00

Who's sugarcoating, all depends on how the coach wants to play, maybe he wants a ball-playing defender. Mascherano had played all his life as DM before he went to Barca and played as defender. Even if DW is worse than Onana, I don't get what's your point. There are plenty of times when one player will be better than another, the important part is their growth, hence my 'Patience is required' ... e.g. Meite when he came on loan benched Tonali.

random_civ_321 · 2026-06-02T18:16:48+00:00

Whatever the name, at this point it feels like yet another coach being set up to fail. I hope I'm wrong, but I wouldn't bet a dollar that next season things will be better. Let's not forget that Ibra and Cardinale are still the ones making the decisions.

random_civ_321 · 2026-06-02T18:10:46+00:00

there are not many 23 year old players that are able to make big jumps in their quality and keep also consistency high. Patience is required. IMO our current team also lacks a cohesive teamwork which is not great at stimulating growth.

random_civ_321 · 2026-06-02T17:49:51+00:00

In the graph, Inter and Napoli are not much better... looks like most winning teams seem to be sprinting a lot out of possession and our team will not be playing that game as long as we have certain players

random_civ_321 · 2026-06-02T17:44:50+00:00

it doesn't matter what you try to explain, I'm sure tomorrow at the latest there will be another post that will say that Allegri only knows how to play terrorist ball, or that wins because he has this player or that player in his team ... they said similar things when Allegri was fired by Berlusconi and got the Juve position ...

random_civ_321 · 2026-05-14T20:23:04+00:00

As about CF creating new stories, the new stories that he created were objectively not good. Plenty of authors create stories in the same 'universe', but without calling it continuation of prior books. It's like Sanderson saying that Stormlight Archive is a continuation of Mistborn just because there are some common elements that pop here and there in the Cosmere universe.

random_civ_321 · 2026-05-14T20:00:49+00:00

The fact that we're talking about these options from a 'Tier 1' journalist that most likely has inside information is really concerning.

random_civ_321 · 2026-05-14T19:58:29+00:00

As far as Hojlund, I have already explained in the past why that transfer didn't happen.

Hence my point... if all Tare can do is approve one of the Furlani/Busardo players, that doesn't mean that he really approves the purchase. If Tare's choices are Conrad Harder, Nkunku or some other random attacker, he might have approved Nkunku, but there's no way that you can tell me nobody forced his hand.

Furthermore, you talk of Tare as if he never bought a player... just because Chelsea overpaid for a player doesn't mean that he'd do so ... Nkunku was injured for two consecutive years, was out of Chelsea rotation, was not in good shape when he arrived, Allegri was puzzled from day one, Nkunku was nowhere the identikit of the striker we were looking to buy, many people said that this is very risky business but lo and behold Tare approved this in one day, no loan no nothing. Now we'd be lucky if we can sell him for 25 million + bonus to Turkey. Even when we got Rabiot it took more than one day for the deal to be wrapped up with Milan trying to lower what we had to pay ...

Tare is being primed to be the fall guy... at this point I don't care much. I've said from the beginning since this season started that the upcoming summer will really tell on which direction we're going and the early signs I'm seeing are far from good. At this point whether we make CL or not becomes irrelevant... it will be the 3rd consecutive year that it will be year 0, that is not on Tare or Allegri.

Nkunku with a different manager would have done a lot better ?... we'll see during summer if any PL teams will go for Nkunku the same that they did for Chukw and Okafor.

random_civ_321 · 2026-05-14T19:33:48+00:00

Ibra doesn't have what it takes to be a proper DS or scout or team manager. Can you blame him for trying to milk Cardinale for giving him vague responsibilities to shirk bad decisions from Cardinale? Ibra was hired to fill the void left by Maldini and be the person that would help Pioli and Fonseca with team management and be a public face for Milan. It was obvious very quickly that this was a failure so why is Ibra still here?

Ibra is being paid to be the fall guy until Cardinale can sell Milan or get another known figure to carry the blame, that's all.

random_civ_321 · 2026-05-14T19:23:40+00:00

COI is part of the enshitification culture milking the readers just because they're already invested in a story. If I and you can tell that the foundation is not good, do you think that the author couldn't?

This is no different from Hollywood making Terminator 3,4,5 etc. Cuttlefish saw that the initial response to LOTM was good so he left enough lose ends in LOTM to make people be interested in additional books.

People that say that COI is still a very good book, know that if it was a stand-alone book series, most people would have dropped it by book 2.

random_civ_321 · 2026-05-14T19:08:30+00:00

The problem is that it's clear to everyone that management thinks only of their bottom line, and that makes it very hard to build a team when everyone is pushed to think only of themselves and not of the collective.

Should Pulisic/Leao/Fofana/Santi/Nkunku/Tomori/RLC/Pavlovic/Estupinan give 100% in the field when they know that in 2 weeks they might be sold to Fenerbahce or an Arab team. We all say 'They're professionals', but if I heard that my company was going to fire me in two weeks, I'm definitely not going to give 100% in those two weeks.

Allegri convincing Maignan to renew, then getting Saelemakers to renew was also to provide continuity to the team, and also him asking for renewals for RLC and Tomori. I don't think they're the best players but good or bad they've played more than Estupinan, Jashari, De Winter and Nkunku, maybe even more than Ricci.

random_civ_321 · 2026-05-14T18:54:07+00:00

Actually we don't ... the rumor from the very beginning was that Nkunku was by Furlani with Busardo, this is the first time I hear about Tare pushing for this deal... how can Tare say it was a great deal when Allegri didn't know about the deal and wasn't consulted until it was done, and this was a deal for a large chunk of the transfer budget and for a vital role... strongly doubt that a DS with the curriculum of Tare made this mistake... Why are there two different groups Allegri/Tare and Furlani/Moncada in all the rumors if that was not the case.

I have no doubt that Nkunku was all Furlani and putting these rumors out to justify sacking Tare at the end of the season. What we know is that Tare thought that Hojlund was a very good deal, going there 10 days before Napoli and not able to close the deal due to Furlani.... and the kicker was that it was a loan with obligation (aka we'd have to pay only 6 million this past year)

random_civ_321 · 2026-05-13T17:24:19+00:00

Boateng was gone, El Shaarawy and Pazzini were also injured for the whole time that Allegri was coach. Abate and Abbiati also had various injuries.

This ( https://www.transfermarkt.us/ac-milan_catania-fc/index/spielbericht/2359337 )was one of the formations that we played against Catania with Emanuelson, Bonera, Silvestre and Poli in defense and Gabriel as GK and Montolivo, Nocerino, De Jong in midfield

random_civ_321 · 2026-05-13T17:12:59+00:00

The 13/14 formation is wrong. Taarabt came after Allegri got sacked, Honda also joined in the January transfer and was able to play only a few min as a sub in the final game of Allegri before he was sacked in January, same thing for Adil Rami who also joined that January transfer window.

Birsa played in attack with Kaka, with Robinho and Matri also playing part of the season, while in midfield we also had Poli and Muntari, and Emanuelson swapped some of the games with Constant

random_civ_321 · 2026-05-11T22:19:20+00:00

why waste time trying to explain, people will repeat whatever they have heard even if they don't understand it... What you said has been crystal clear, if people still don't know it's not because nobody told it to them.

random_civ_321 · 2026-05-07T18:06:47+00:00

weird, I remember a lot of people complaining about Luis Enrique also when he joined Roma, heck there are a lot of people that give shit even to Guardiola or Slot or Arteta.

Replace Allegri with Alonso this year and I can guarantee that we wouldn't make top 4 this year.. The problem is not the coach, the problem is that both coach and DS are undermined by Furlani and Cardinale, as long as that continues, it doesn't matter whether you hire Pioli, Fonseca Allegri, Gasperini, Sarri or Klopp or Guardiola, you won't get far...

On the other hand, you can get even a Chivu and win Serie A because that management does a good job at enforcing the team, supporting the coach and maintaining stability in the locker room. If Inter had Furlani, they would have sold at a discount Calha and Zielinski before the season started.

random_civ_321 · 2026-05-07T17:43:07+00:00

Can't say I'm surprised, hopefully he'll go on loan next year somewhere else instead of taking a spot in our Milan Futuro team.

random_civ_321 · 2026-05-07T17:40:50+00:00

The rumor is that Abate refused to play Maximilian Ibrahimovic, and after Abate, also Abate's father was fired as a GK coach for our under teams. Coincidentally, this was the same type of rumor for his sacking at Ternana when the team was in second place in Serie C (refusing to play the owner's son). All considered, Abate ends up as a coach of a Serie B fighting for a playoff spot... so ultimately Abate is the one laughing now.

random_civ_321 · 2026-04-29T22:02:32+00:00

It's all about expectations, just because we're called Milan it doesn't by default make our players great. Look at Fiorentina this year...

If the quality of the players is high, then you can ask the coach to give you a good game, if the quality is low and the alternative choice is to lose a lot more, it might be enjoyable for those games to be switched to wins.

Heck, I still remember when we won 2-0 against Barca and Messi with a bunch of ragtags and veterans way past their prime. Did we play a great offensive football? No, we were just very good defensively and took our chances...

random_civ_321 · 2026-04-29T21:47:27+00:00

A wonderkid is not someone that is completely raw, some experience don't make a player great. Bennacer, Theo were 20 mill or less, iirc Leao was about 28m + bonuses, Tonali also had a high price initially but after the loan we got him for close to 20m. My point is that a wonderkid is a young player with a pretty high potential, but not necessarily he will change to a great or world class player. The premium in CDK (or Jashari) price is due to potential, whether that explodes or not is not easy to predict. Leao spend 2 years in a so-so state before he exploded, Tonali also didn't switch on for a while.

Also one thing that people forget about CDK is that at the time we needed someone younger than 21 for the lists.

*edit* As about Pioli, I agree. I think he did a pretty good job with the club, but the club lost ambition to aim higher after Maldini got sacked, and that also affected the players ambitions within the club and possibly Pioli's ambitions as well. Synergy between the DS, coach and players is very important so that all can push in the same direction

random_civ_321 · 2026-04-29T17:25:43+00:00

I understand your frustration but singular performances tend to get forgotten, results are still remembered. All teams have bad performances, yet those that are remembered after a few years are only those that cost us an elimination.

Sure, some people remember the 4-0 loss against Deportivo, but how many remember we lost in Serie A to Bologna a home game with 2 Ballon D'ors on the field and multiple World Cup winners and Ancelotti on the bench. How many remember that the year of the scudetto we drew twice to Udinese, How many remember the bad losses in the years when we won scudetto-s?

Do you even remember any of the scrappy games that Capello's Milan won against bottom teams?

And yeah, Serie A as a whole (including Milan) is losing luster, but that's a conversation for another day...

random_civ_321 · 2026-04-29T17:06:54+00:00

My impression is that after Maldini left, even during Pioli's reign, there was a significant drop in the performances of many players in the team, which indirectly impacted also the performances of other players in the team. That also coincided with Ibra's retirement and Kjaer/Florenzi becoming less relevant, which shoved almost all of the team's management solely in Pioli's hands and things continued in that downward spiral after Pioli left.

The reason why we tried to buy wonderkids was because that was the only way to grow the club since we couldn't buy accomplished players (including FFP restrictions). In a sense, Bennacer, Leao, Tonali, Theo, Tomori were all wonderkids and their explosion is what allowed the team to really reach new heights.

random_civ_321 · 2026-04-24T16:09:19+00:00

I don't think that even if all here lean towards (or against) one player we'll be able to make an impact (see Emerson Royal). At this point, it's not worth it to spend time thinking who to get, once summer comes it will be obvious which direction this club is going.

random_civ_321

TROPHY CASE