After 7 long seasons, Milan have made it to the UEFA Champions League. The various expiriments, projects, permutations and combinations have finally yielded a return for Milan in the most elite competitions.And for a team that has achieved this milestone but would like to grow stronger is with 2 actions- Strengthen the team in the transfer market and reward existing performers in the team.
Milan have already started making a moves in the transfer market redeeming Tomori and signing Mike Maignan as replacement for contract rebel Gigio Donnarumma and as a result have spent 42 Million in the transfer market in the space of a week (with amortization it becomes 8.3 Million a season).
Now comes the renewal part. Milan are in negotiations with Frank Kessie and Davide Calabria to reward them for their stellar season and if rumors are to be believed even Theo Hernandez may be in for a renewal. There is also the big conundrum in the form of Alessio Romagnoli’s renewal.
Surely but now Milan would have learnt their lesson from the protracted renewal saga with Donnarumma and despised agant Mino Raiola with Donnarumma famously telling Maldini “I do what Mino tells me”.
Alessio and Donnarumma have a lot of similarities. Both players have been in Milan since their underperforming days especially with Alessio rejecting a move to Chelsea to stay in Milan and Milan rewarding his loyalty with a 4 year contract in 2018 (with a different agent). But the most disturbing similarity is that they both are the clients of Raiola.
Surely Raiola would not so easily forget the bad press Milan and Maldini subjected his client Donnarumma to after Donnarumma tried to hold the club ransom to get them to pay him a lucrative 10M per season contract making him the world’s best paid keeper.
The renewal of Alessio has been a much debated topic with supporters of his renewal wanting Milan to reward his loyalty while his naysayers would like him to leave the club while he has some value as they feel Milan can find a better player suited to Stefano Pioli’s style of play.
If anything Milan have learned from Donnarumma it is for Milan to take a stand much like how they have done for the renewal of Hakan and Donnarumma’s renewal. Renew at a reasonable rate or leave the club and with an ultimatum to answer the club within a specified time period.
With Romagnoli down to his last year his book value i.e the value of the asset in the books (in this case the asset is the player) is Zero and this means that if milan sell Romagnoli at, let’s say close to 15M, it would be a plus valenza (pure profit) of 15M and it would help Milan to balance the books even further.
Milan had an opportunity to sell Donnarumma last season when he had 1 year left but with a pandemic hit economy no suitors came for the keeper and the club was confident of keeping the player. But now it is time we learned from our mistake and take a stand.
The Milan Blog 