Piatek and Florenzi’s puzzling departures explained - All the latest Fantasy Football news, tips and reviews from the EuroFantasyLeague.com blog team
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On paper there were many reasons to be confident that Piatek could be a long term building block for the club, especially since many expected him to benefit from the managerial switch going from the very defensive Gattuso to the Sarriball disciple Giampaolo, who had just overseen Quagliarella’s banner season at Sampdoria. Because Piatek was scoring at an Inzaghi like level, it was easy to overlook the fact that the Polish striker was extremely limited technically, but during this campaign they became very evident.
While it’s debatable if Milan would have pursued Zlatan Ibrahimovic at all had Piatek come close to his production from last season, his arrival spelled the end for the Polish attacker if certain financial condition were met. The rossoneri did not want to risk his value plummeting further which certainly could have been the case had he gone to a team on loan and struggled, so once they had an opportunity to avoid taking a loss on his amortized value they pulled the trigger (since they acquired him from Genoa they have amortized a portion of what they invested, making the reported 27 million offer enough to cover his remaining value on the books).
But why would Milan give up on him so quickly since in many ways he fit exactly the type of player Ivan Gazidis described when he laid out the vision of Milan under the Elliott fund- young, with the potential to either become a star or an asset for a plusvalenza on the transfer market? Unfortunately the rossoneri’s current financial situation does not allow them to have the chips to gamble in order to find out if Piatek is closer to what we saw last year or in the current campaign.
Milan had one of the top 5 payrolls in Serie A going into the season and then added Zlatan Ibarhimovic’s significant salary. To Boban, Maldini and Massara’s credit, during this January window they were able to get rid of a lot of dead weight- Pepe Reina AKA the highest paid backup keeper in Serie A on a team who doesn’t play games in European competitions and a young stud keeper, Ricardo Rodriguez who lost his starting job to Theo Hernandez as well as Suso and “oggetto misterioso” Mattia Caldara.
But getting rid of Piatek does come with some risk although it makes financial sense. On one hand, the rossoneri were able to get a substantial offer for Piatek despite his dreadful performance during this current season because there is so much scarcity on the market for quality pure number 9s, as demonstrated by Roma offering Edin Dzeko a 3 year deal at the age of 33 and Inter breaking their transfer record to sign Romelu Lukaku, but on the other hand it won’t be easy for them to find a quality option when they have to replace Zlatan Ibrahimovic.