I didn't say anything about "fooling Woodward", thats an older argument by someone else. I am just arguing against the constant narrative by Brehme, you know the "Marotta is shit, Conte is shit, Icardi is a God" agenda.
The Lukaku transfer was a complicated saga. It was clear that Juve were very motivated to get him, as were Inter. There was a lot going around in the background, many many rumours and speculations: I remember reading an interview with Dybala's agent where he claimed that Juve and Man Utd couldn't find agreement; English press had reports that the deal fell through coz of the agent's demands; there were rumours that Marotta convinced Dybala that Inter would be a better option than Man Utd if Juve force him to move; and then there are reports that Dybala himself never wanted to leave. Its hard to say what actually happened, and Brehme like always is spinning it to suit his agenda.
The only thing for sure is that both Juve and Inter wanted Lukaku, and Inter got him. Thats the factual part of it, without spin. In my opinion we overpaid, but as I explained that is understandable. That part is opinion.
It was the same when Brehme was trying to paint the Eriksen transfer as a failure of Marotta. Thats the kind of bullshit narrative I am trying to argue against. Sure, Marotta dragged on that transfer for a few frustrating weeks due to his penny pinching habits, but the fact is that we got a player of Eriksen's profile for 20m. You cannot spin that as a negative just to suit your bullshit agenda.
I won't even start with the whole Icardi bullshit, hopefully we are rid of that unprofessional turd forever.
The only agenda I see here is you having a fundamental disagreement with me and twisting everything I say to suit your narrative.
I never said Marotta or Conte is shit. I said I don't want them at Inter.
Marotta because he's overrated (getting full credit for the recent Juventus dynasty by Inter fans is ridiculous and borderline schizophrenic) and I disagree with his management style, which is an old head that is ultra conservative, stubborn, wants to work only with specific people he can control and has no regard for loyalty but is just a cold accounting type that hasn't really produced much great results. The biggest coups of Juventus were not his doings, with the exception of Pirlo and he was mostly Agnelli's wish rather than Marotta's choice, but I'll allow it. Selling Pogba could be seen as a great deal, but he didn't want to go for Higuain and Pjanic, Agnelli did because he wanted to eliminate the competition. Marotta had other targets as I specifically mentioned earlier and it's ironic that they were Lukaku and Eriksen actually
As for Conte, I've been over this a lot. He's also very overrated because of his Juventus tainted "glory" and for pretty much being a stubborn fuck in the Euro. For some reason Euro 2012 where Italy was an unlikely finalist was a fluke, but Conte reaching the last 8 is some sort of miracle, despite having better talent available that he refused to use... He's not a crap coach, he's just not an elite one that we're paying him as if he were. And all he's shown us so far is that he's still a stubborn fuck and he managed to get eliminated from Europe which was the catalyst of Spalletti's tormented season in the 2nd half of last season. So it's nuts that we have all this support for this Juventus legend that is overpaid and hasn't shown that much, apart from a decent run in the league that doesn't differ that much from Mancini's or Spalletti's first season in the 2010s. Which pretty much = Handanovic saving our asses and sometimes we end up scoring more than the opposition. When Handanovic was out for like 3 weeks, everyone was trembling. There wasn't much confidence in this team.
As for Icardi, we went over that many times and this exaggeration of my view is getting ridiculous. Just because I don't want to crucify someone that the management has fucked over undeservedly because he retaliated doesn't mean I consider him a deity or a person without mistakes.
Now, to your agenda.
I said that Marotta was not a great negotiator and it's true. He has failed so far in every deal he got involved.
1) Lukaku: Wasted 2 months and almost lost the player to Juventus before agreeing to the initial terms.
2) Lazaro: Spent 25m on him for no clear reason.
3) Barella: Cagliari wanted 35m, he managed to give them 37m.
4) Eriksen: Tottenham wanted 20m, his deal was expiring and he was free to talk to anyone but we took the risk of negotiating the deal from 15m and didn't even consider paying up the 20m for fucking Eriksen, but we had no hesitation on pulling that sum and then some for freaking Lazaro! Yes, I'm not going to praise Marotta for that. Good job on Inter convincing Eriksen to come, but Marotta almost cost us the transfer. You can hail him as a genius all you want.
5) Victor Moses and Ashley Young. After Conte was upset that we couldn't bring his request in Vidal and was even more upset that we'd bring Eriksen who he didn't want, we sealed two unnecessary deals just because the coach ordered them. Victor Moses in particular makes little sense while Ashley Young is one of the most random transfers I've seen in a while at Inter. He's not doing bad, but that doesn't mean he's some great deal business, Man Utd was happy to offload him.
I do get that there's a reason why some of these deals may have been increased as it allows for more flexibility given that we extended the payment duration, but the thing is, we are crap at selling. This is why I was furious and exclaiming that we've committed 300m in one summer.
1) Icardi. We started the summer with an asking price of 80m, tried to hand him to Juventus for Dybala in order to absolve both of our FFP problems (why even think of doing that when all we want is for them to get in a weaker spot???) only to have both players reject this move. Barely managed to get a deal of 5+65 option. Of which, corona or not, we sealed the deal at 62m total. More than 10% discount, that's a number that makes several mothers run to clothing stores.
And the fun part is that Marotta was the person who managed to reduce Icardi's value from an 100m player to outcast.
2) Perisic. Still yet to see this, but we rejected a 5+25 option in January from Arsenal which coincidentally probably would have eliminated the need to throw Icardi under the bus, only to loan him the next summer on a free loan with the hope that Bayern will make history by signing another rare loanee. For a mere 20m.
3) Joao Mario. We rejected offers of 15m because it'd give us a capital loss only to loan him to a Russian team with an option of a figure they never spent before at 18m (their biggest transfer was at 12m iirc which with the current conversion probably falls to just a bit over 10m), which they'll probably send back to us or negotiate to 12m or so. Remains to be seen. But more on this on his lookalike's comment.
4) Nainggolan. Tried to ship him to China, even boarded him on a plane to Asia in the hope that he'll be convinced or whatever despite being blocked from the team, only to loan him on a funded loan to Cagliari. So we're paying Nainggolan to play against us...
5) Gabriel Barbosa. Flamengo kept bidding 18m all December long only for Marotta to say no, I want 20m. He offered him to Tottenham for Eriksen, they said maybe, Barbosa said no. We accepted an offer from West Ham at 20m, he also said no. We ended up selling him almost a month later to Flamengo (which means we paid his salary, which is funny in not the haha way) for the price of... 18m.
6) Miranda. We had offers to sell him but instead we terminated his contract, giving us a 3m capital loss and iirc we also compensated him for that. And he ended up at Suning's Chinese team... Maybe we can put the blame on Suning here, but still. If we want to give Marotta credit for everything, let's be consistent, right?
7) Borja Valero. We had offers from 500k to 2m, but we wanted 3m. His book value was 2.5m but we just couldn't sell him to free up a roster spot because we'd get a small capital hit..
Now please, give me reasons why I should embrace Marotta as some sort of super manager that I should be pleased to have around. We can continue this to the Marotta thread.
10 years of FIF
Nostradamus
Most Passionate Member
