That Luxembourg owner, I believe.........................is the same guy who owns Boavista. The one who never paid FCD for Reggie Cannon, and then never paid Reggie Cannon. There are a lot of European clubs in significant financial distress. There was a lot of talk that Schalke would have gone under had they been relegated last year, which seemed possible for much of the season. We on these boards complain about MLS a lot. But what the players say is they get paid what they're supposed to get paid..............when they're supposed to get paid. And that is not the case in many places on the planet.
He started an agency buying and selling stakes in players just before UEFA banned it. He also destroyed team Lotus in F1.
That sounds like a recipe for disaster. Signing players just because they are American and the American owner wants an American player on the team...... This is why fans should NEVER be sporting directors/general managers. They make decisions based on emotion, and not on good logic.
France in particular has alot of issues because of their tv deal https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5630833/2024/07/12/ligue-1-tv-deal-broadcast-rights/ The upside for France though is no one has a better development system than they do.
I think it’s the opposite. If they can’t afford to bring in players from the outside they are going to have to play more youth players. See Barcelona in recent years and all the young players who have gotten opportunities super young. Yamal is an awesome player for instance, but he doesn’t get his chance this soon without the many financial issues from Barcelona preventing them from signing anyone from the outside.
If we look at the teams in the middle-to-bottom of Ligue 1, many of them are considerably weaker financially than the average MLS team. That's a very top heavy league (as many outside the top 2 or 3 are). I'll pick one. Le Havre. I picked them out of my butt because of Amir Richarson. Transfer record of Le Havre all time is ~$2 million according to transfermarkt. They bought Emmanuel Sabbi for ~$1 million, and he was their 8th highest transfer of all time. [A middling MLS club like FC Dallas obliterated that transfer record in each of the last two off-seasons. Velasco and Musa.] When you look at clubs like that, its no surprise that MLS players don't transfer to Ligue 1. The number of clubs in Ligue 1 that would want to sign a player like Ben Cremaschi for the fee required..................is a fairly short list. They'd prefer to develop a domestic youngster like Amir Richardson. And of course in France the raw materials are there for them to do that. The result is that France (and Spain) have the most players in top 5 leagues.
The best academies are the ones that sign the most players. They don't care about the 99% that fail because one success can fund their program and their entire club for years.
Could be. Could also be that a team in financial distress starts cutting their budget and an easy cut is the academy.
I don’t believe anything about Weston McKennie rumors. Not a word. I believe (because I’ve seen this movie) he will be playing way too much in every competition for Ye Old Lady by October 1 because they’ll have injuries and Wes is a bionic human with rizzz.
Depends on the league. It's become the opposite in the Premier League. English academies at this point are basically money-making machines designed to balance the books and stay within sustainability rules. Its the loophole that teams are using and use it across the premier league. Its like when people say that Chelsea need a CB. Then you realize that they sold CBs out of their academy like Ake for 20 million, Guehi for 20 million, Tomori for 30 million, and the list goes on. The point of their academy isn't to develop a host of kids for their first team. It's a money generator. Armando Broja: Why clubs are selling homegrown academy players for profit - BBC Sport When clubs sell academy graduates, such as Manchester City's £40m sale of Cole Palmer to Chelsea in the summer, that entire amount goes down as 'pure profit' in their accounts and can help them navigate the top flight's strict profit and sustainability rules. While fans may be upset at seeing homegrown players leaving, generating cash from academies can allow clubs to keep spending big - and Chelsea and City are among the best in Europe at doing it. And yes, Chelsea's loan army deal is also part of that money making operation. The chances are that players such as Slonina and Wiley will never play for Chelsea. The idea is that Chelsea wants them to develop on loan in places like Strasbourg, and then they can sell them for profit. Chelsea signed yet another goalkeeper. 22 year old Danish international Filig Jorgensen from Villarreal. They have 8 goalkeepers on first team contracts alone. And people think the plan is for Slonina to become the #1? How? Don't be delusional.
Someone did research into 4,109 former category one "elite" academy players in England born in years 1995 to 2000. 30% signed professional contracts at 16. 3% went on to play one Premier League game. Only 10% went on to play more than 20 games for a Premier League or Football League club. It's a meat grinder business.
If he is not sold and there are enough injuries this could happen, but it is unlikely. If Motta is canning Chiesa without any current replacement, then I doubt he will backtrack on Wes where they have already bought 3 replacements and are working on 2-3 more. And here it is right here, straight from the Boss's mouth: “The important thing is to approach a new generation with Motta. Today, we have a young team, and he is a young coach who was also a player and can help us build.”🎙️| Elkann to @Gazzetta_it pic.twitter.com/DjVPfrU0kc— Bianconeri Zone (@BianconeriZone) August 6, 2024
young teams finish low in the table, and mottas patience only goes so far. they can say theyre committed to this transition all the want, but if theyre in 9th on oct 1 and have a couple of these guys on the bench that resolve may not hold.
We'll see. We know what's going on here. When teams of this caliber say they're "going young" its usually is because of money. Juventus dire finances will force the club to sell players - The figures revealed | Juvefc.com Juve wasn't in Europe last season. Revenues are down due to that, and they weren't in the best of financial health anyway. So they need to cut salary and generate revenue via transfers. And you tell your fans you're going young with a "new project." They'll certainly bring in new players, but at the end of the day they want to sell, sell, sell the old guard. Its not like the old guard did all that great last year. They finished 23 points behind Inter. [By the way, Inter isn't in good financial shape either.] We can't look at is as they "hate McKennie." It's just business. It sucks for him. It seems like he really liked playing there last season. His career was reignited under Allegri after a dismal time at Leeds. But...............its just business. Barcelona is telling fans the same thing right now. We're going young. How bad are Barcelona's finances, and how can they be fixed? - ESPN
You can watch the full game of Juventus vs. Juventus Next Génération game. It is a 4-2-3-1. 1 is Vlahovic, 3 from left to right — Yildiz,D.Luiz, Weah. 2 Thuram, Locatelli(Wes position). 4 are Cambiaso, Bremer, Gatti, Danilo. Goalie is Di Gregorio. Big boy won 4:0 with Weah scored the 2nd.
MLS pays on time and has professional medical and training staff, I think that's worth a lot, to say nothing of the other advantages of US life. I thought Juve winning the Copa Italia would have helped out their finances quite a bit because they got two paydays from that.
Making the Champions League and the Club World Cup certainly help. But as that linked article states, the financial situation was and is fairly dire. Inter Milan is a mess too. Oaktree Takes Over Inter Milan After Debt Payment Failure (yahoo.com) Investment firm Oaktree Capital Management has taken ownership control of Inter Milan, one of the biggest brands in global soccer, after Inter’s owner, Suning, failed to repay a loan due this week with a balance of €395 million ($427 million based on current exchange rates). These big clubs just spend and spend and spend and spend and spend and say............we're too big to fail. Someone will bail us out. We'll figure it out. We'll get new investors. But at some point the whole thing is going to collapse. We saw in the last transfer window a significant ease in spending. And while teams are spending in this window, its really quite tame. And when the "big" teams don't spend (like Barca), the whole pyramid suffers.
It's been working for a century. American asset management firms are putting that at risk. They've been destroying American firms for decades so why not?
There's just not a lot of net spending going on right now. Manchester City at the top of the pyramid has spent 25 million on one player. And he came from their own affiliate Troyes. So that was moving money from the right hand to the left hand. Many big clubs are able to buy players only if they sell players. That's sort of the situation Juve is in financially. They can buy new players if they sell all of these players we've been talking about (including McKennie). The problem for them is everyone knows they need to sell these players. Teams want these players but are looking for a bargain. They know Juve needs to offload McKennie. So there will be haggling and negotiating, etc. behind the scenes. Eventually it will get done.