Beppe Marotta

[brehme1989]

As always, the truth is in the middle. Marotta is working with a tight budget but he could also be looking at good and cheap players from outside Italy who are also under 30.

Is the budget really that tight?
We are like a top 10 spender in the world in salaries and we spend around 60m per year on new transfers, even as "broke" as we are. I obviously don't mean net, but money is still thrown around.

We spend a lot of that budget on bums and failed transfers and as a result we suffer from it. The finances on a corporate level are definitely a serious factor, but not to the point that it's the main reason why we cannot function properly on the inside.

It's not easy and there are big hurdles, but let's not pretend that we're Bologna or Celta Vigo here.

On a completely unrelated note, where do you file your application to become a scout for Inter? All 5 of my references will vouch for my nous of picking good restaurants.

DM @Darth_Ausilio

 

[Fitzy]

As always, the truth is in the middle.

There are a lot of problems at the club, a lot of them started before Marotta arrived. I'd say you're strapped if you have to make the (wrong) choice to pick Lukaku over Dybala (Christ what a terrible call) during the off-season, for example.

Btw, I call it "off-season" instead of Summer because it's Winter down here at that time of year.

 

[brehme1989]

it was "off" season alright

 

[Harpsabu]

Is the budget really that tight?
We are like a top 10 spender in the world in salaries and we spend around 60m per year on new transfers, even as "broke" as we are. I obviously don't mean net, but money is still thrown around.

We spend a lot of that budget on bums and failed transfers and as a result we suffer from it. The finances on a corporate level are definitely a serious factor, but not to the point that it's the main reason why we cannot function properly on the inside.

It's not easy and there are big hurdles, but let's not pretend that we're Bologna or Celta Vigo here.




DM @Darth_Ausilio

Weekly Post 408

CIES Football Observatory Weekly Post

football-observatory.com

When did he arrive? 19/20? Since then weve a net spend of - 52m, salaries are high yes but you can't complain about that then also complain about not renewing skriniar. It's clear we need to cut salaries. In the words of Zanetti on skriniar, we offered a renewal within our means and he declined it due to an offer we can't compete with.

He's absolutely on a budget.

 

[brehme1989]

Weekly Post 408

CIES Football Observatory Weekly Post

football-observatory.com

When did he arrive? 19/20? Since then weve a net spend of - 52m, salaries are high yes but you can't complain about that then also complain about not renewing skriniar. It's clear we need to cut salaries. In the words of Zanetti on skriniar, we offered a renewal within our means and he declined it due to an offer we can't compete with.

He's absolutely on a budget.

He's on a budget that said let's sign Lukaku for 13m gross on a loan instead of Dybala on 10m gross. Which is pretty much Skriniar's pay hike that never came.

Skriniar would have accepted the offer, he didn't leave because of money, he left due to lack of respect towards him. He was going to sign for 5.5m actually but then Marotta decided, WITHIN MINUTES, to sell him, which irritated both him and his agent. And even Zhang, who wanted at least 40% more from a Skriniar sale to PSG. And that opened a can of worms with PSG promising him twice as much and then he realized that this isn't worth keep going. Why do you think Curva Nord changed their minds after speaking with the player? That's Marotta fucking up, simple as. He didn't even bother talking about a new deal until fucking October.... And Skriniar hadn't even accepted PSG until he talked with Inter again.... You cannot mistreat players all the time and then whine in the media that they're not loyal and that they want out... Of course they will eventually want out when you're in charge and you behave this way!


That -52m net is for 2018-19 until this season, Marotta's time counts from 2019-20 and on and the first season includes cases of sales from players that were shipped before Marotta came but their option/obligation triggered then. And it's a bit creative, when you consider the Lukaku sale is included there and you conveniently forget how that was managed eventually. And the figures aren't really exact but let's pretend they are. The transfer money in from the summer of 2019 are all Ausilio's deals with Radu, Vanheusden, Ansaldi, Manaj, Puscas and Adorante plusvalenza marathon. Marotta only sold Barbosa, which wasn't even a thing as he got as much as the option was but actually managed to pay his January salary because he couldn't negotiate down
So it's more like Marotta has a positive net spend after all, even with Lukaku's sale.

But it doesn't even matter. I don't care about the net spend, I care about the outflow. Why are we pretending that there's been no money all this time? The only season we had zero funds was last summer. And what did we do? Waste over 20m for Lukaku. You know what cost 20m in Serie A this season? Kvaratschkelia and Dybala.... combined!

Resources aren't great but resource management is beyond appalling!

Failure to negotiate extensions in a timely manner.
Failure to secure targets, then insist on them while everyone else knows about them and the price is higher than your budget. End up with nothing instead of changing focus.
Failure to sell unwanted players.
Failure to keep core players intact because you want the easy way out, yet the players don't even wanna entertain listening to offers, let alone leave. Thus:
Failure to get maximum from player sales (with the exception of Lukaku where we found some madman who spent another 600m on random kids from youtube)

How's any of that not the management's fault???

 

[Il Drago]

Marotta also sold Icardi for 60m. And Inter have had a negative (not even zero) budget since 2021 summer and that's an undeniable fact. Good thing they signed Hakimi early else we would have had 0 budget in 2020 as well. Let's not act like Marotta has a transfer budget to work with.

 

[brehme1989]

Marotta also sold Icardi for 60m. And Inter have had a negative (not even zero) budget since 2021 summer and that's an undeniable fact. Good thing they signed Hakimi early else we would have had 0 budget in 2020 as well. Let's not act like Marotta has a transfer budget to work with.

No one denies that. But let's not pretend that we spend the amount of zero on transfers. It's the typical "we have to sell before we buy" nonsense we've been hearing for 20 years. Why is Marotta absolved of everything when we wanted to chew the heads of Sabatini, Fassone and Branca for operating with much less and having something like half the salary budget?

Unlike those guys, Marotta is the only one that had a summer where he spent over 200m... Who else could say that?

 

[pazza moratti]

I think Marotta and whole managment team has made lot of good transfers and no director/managment get every transfer right. We have had big financial trubles since covid started, but we have still managet to win trophys and we have stayed in CL.

What can I say… Marotta is one of the most succeful director in this sport and has kept on winning for over decade now.

I just hope Zhang stop intervening to our transfers and let our managment do the work.

 

[Il Drago]

But that's the thing. We don't have to sell before we buy. We have to sell and sell even more before we can buy anyone. We sold Hakimi and we still couldn't sign anyone. We also had to sell Lukaku in order to sign players. Next summer is going to be the same. We need a 60m sale till June just to have zero budget.

No one denies Marotta had a very high budget in his first 12 months (2019 summer plus Eriksen and Hakimi). He had an early Moratti-like first summer. He built the core that won the Scudetto and has kept the team competitive till now. But things have changed drastically since then and the impact of that summer is fading at a high rate when we lose starters almost every summer.

 

[RickyMaravilla'sRightFoot]

But that's the thing. We don't have to sell before we buy. We have to sell and sell even more before we can buy anyone. We sold Hakimi and we still couldn't sign anyone. We also had to sell Lukaku in order to sign players. Next summer is going to be the same. We need a 60m sale till June just to have zero budget.

No one denies Marotta had a very high budget in his first 12 months (2019 summer plus Eriksen and Hakimi). He had an early Moratti-like first summer. He built the core that won the Scudetto and has kept the team competitive till now. But things have changed drastically since then and the impact of that summer is fading at a high rate when we lose starters almost every summer.

I would argue Ausilio, Sabatini, and Spalletti built the core but yeah.

 

[brehme1989]

But that's the thing. We don't have to sell before we buy. We have to sell and sell even more before we can buy anyone. We sold Hakimi and we still couldn't sign anyone. We also had to sell Lukaku in order to sign players. Next summer is going to be the same. We need a 60m sale till June just to have zero budget.

No one denies Marotta had a very high budget in his first 12 months (2019 summer plus Eriksen and Hakimi). He had an early Moratti-like first summer. He built the core that won the Scudetto and has kept the team competitive till now. But things have changed drastically since then and the impact of that summer is fading at a high rate when we lose starters almost every summer.

Hakimi was replaced by Dumfries. It's not like this is a very popular position to fill. Dumfries with all his deficiencies is probably amongst the top 10 RWBs in the world. I mean, Trent Alexander-Arnold and Reece James are considered top players in that position ffs

The sales are taking place because under Marotta's watch we raised our annual costs on players from 175m to 230m. And that annual cost is per season obviously. That's another 180m extra costs if you take into account 4 seasons and a slow decline. And it gets higher if you consider his "golden handshakes". And we're still paying for that. These figures include amortization, but I'm not sure if the mega transfer window he has is reflected adequately with these numbers.

So you cannot just say that Marotta has no budget. He's spending around 100m more than what we did in the years before him. And funnily enough, that's the 100m that we don't have. And where does it go? It's not pretty...
We're spending the same amount on salaries as from 2018-19 this season. But 40m more per season on amortization. That's not Joao Mario money... And that's a top player he's going to sell every year to fix his mistakes.


We have been in worse financial situation in the last 10 years, had players that most of Europe wanted to sign, yet we rarely sold anyone unless he was deemed unimportant (eg Kovacic). Now we have a top 12 salary spending in the world and we're trying to sell anyone that breathes. It just doesn't make sense to praise the person who made this possible, as much as the ownership is also at fault for not funneling funds in. But the management is supposed to be able to work with what they have. And Marotta cannot. He got used to having the back of Agnelli and FIGC. And he was riding his white horse when Zhang was pumping Asian sponsor money but now he's talking about how Serie A sucks and how nobody loves him... Come on.

 

[ADRossi]

Marotta has had two straight disastrous summers. First, he chose to sign Correa as the replacement for Lukaku. I don't care that we pursued other options before Correa. The fact is Marotta signed off on what is quickly becoming one of the worst transfers in club history. Then, this summer, we chose Lukaku on an overpriced loan over Dybala.

We had money to spend in both instances and he failed to do so wisely.

 

[Universe]

brehme running to reply when someone praises/defends Marotta on FIF:

Me, running to join him:

 

[Universe]

Resources aren't great but resource management is beyond appalling!

This pretty much sums up everything.

1. Sell Lukaku and Hakimi due to financial situation
2. Management allow a portion of the money to be reinvested
3. Promptly waste that money on Correa, Gosens and re-loaning Lukaku

Yes, I know that's a loose summation but you get my point. And everything that comes next is a consequence of that disastrous Step #3, which a puzzling number of fans seem to either ignore or fail to see the significance of.

Marotta gets criticized for attempting to renew a player like de Vrij who has been a liability for 18 months, and going for another 33 year old in Smalling on huge wages. Fans leap to his defence, saying things like, "we don't have money" and "Marotta's got no budget to work with." And for me, it's just like, maybe he'd have some fucking money if he didn't waste nearly €90m on Correa, Gosens and Lukaku pt II. Maybe he'd have some money if he didn't commit €Xm towards useless renewals for de Vrij, D'Ambrosio and signing Smalling on a free.

Like brehme and ADRossi said, the resource management has been disastrous recently. Marotta has taken some of the biggest L's I've ever seen in the past 2 years.

 

[CafeCordoba]

At the time we signed Gosens, it didn't look bad. It looked like the opposite. Genius move, get the replacement for Perisic 6 months ahead. Dimarco blossoming this well pushed Gosens out which can't be put to the management. If anything, it's a positive problem.

Correa looked bad when we signed him yes, but of course not this bad. @ADRossi doesn't care he wasn't the first or even the second choice, but that just proves the bias.

Lukaku didn't look too bad in the summer. Expensive but he was signed for us to go for the Scudetto, obviously. Well, NO ONE predicted it would end up like what happened. This hindsight argumentation is just plain ridiculous, you people need to admit it.

We can argue if Dybala was a better signing back then and in hindsight it would have definitely have been because Lukaku hasn't been available at all. And then again even you @brehme1989 said earlier it was mostly Zhang and Lukaku himself pushing for the move. But now it turns to Marotta's fault when you guys want to bash Marotta. Just like Skriniar whose sale was blocked by Zhang!

It's like you guys just push aside the ownership below-par actions and the limitations it sets in your bash-fest.

 

[Il Drago]

Maybe he'd have some money if he didn't commit €Xm towards useless renewals for de Vrij, D'Ambrosio and signing Smalling on a free.

Smalling is De Vrij alternative in case Dutchman doesn't renew. They won't sign both.

Also they have decided against offering an extension to D'Ambrosio.

 

[Corrode]

its more and more likely Inter ( zhang and moratta) boards is getting towards into jiangsu dissolved model. or moratta already is looking for next political career?

 

[Harpsabu]

At the time we signed Gosens, it didn't look bad. It looked like the opposite. Genius move, get the replacement for Perisic 6 months ahead. Dimarco blossoming this well pushed Gosens out which can't be put to the management. If anything, it's a positive problem.

Correa looked bad when we signed him yes, but of course not this bad. @ADRossi doesn't care he wasn't the first or even the second choice, but that just proves the bias.

Lukaku didn't look too bad in the summer. Expensive but he was signed for us to go for the Scudetto, obviously. Well, NO ONE predicted it would end up like what happened. This hindsight argumentation is just plain ridiculous, you people need to admit it.

We can argue if Dybala was a better signing back then and in hindsight it would have definitely have been because Lukaku hasn't been available at all. And then again even you @brehme1989 said earlier it was mostly Zhang and Lukaku himself pushing for the move. But now it turns to Marotta's fault when you guys want to bash Marotta. Just like Skriniar whose sale was blocked by Zhang!

It's like you guys just push aside the ownership below-par actions and the limitations it sets in your bash-fest.

Precisely and exactly this. One of the earlier replies to me brehme you blame marotta while also basically admitting he was doing the right thing and zhang doing wrong, but it's still marottas fault.

When we signed gosens this forum was delighted.
Signing lukaku on loan, most were delighted. He's never missed as many games with injury in a season before, no one could have seen that.
Correa was like 6th choice.

No one mentions how well signings like dzeko, mhiki, Acerbi, darmian, hakan, even onana etc have fared. In the last two summers we are net spend of like - 150mln and we are still a competitive team.

 

[brehme1989]

Precisely and exactly this. One of the earlier replies to me brehme you blame marotta while also basically admitting he was doing the right thing and zhang doing wrong, but it's still marottas fault.

Whoa what?

Skriniar wants to stay after seeing us trying to sell starting players.
Marotta says okay, you're staying. I'll give you a new contract.
Five minutes later Skriniar hears that he's been offered to PSG, Barcelona, Manchester United, Tottenham, Chelsea and Manchester City.
He's pissed.
Marotta agrees to sell him for 50m.
Skriniar still doesn't want to leave.
Zhang then blows the initiation of any deal because he wants 80m for Skriniar.
Skriniar still mad because of the situation.
Marotta tells Skriniar he'll offer him a new deal soon.
Soon becomes 4 months later, just 2 months before Skriniar can talk with any team and PSG is mad that we played them like that (due to terrible internal organization) and give Skriniar money no one can refuse.

How did I admit that Marotta did the right thing here? Just because you wanted to sell Skriniar for 50m rather than renew for 5.5m doesn't mean I admitted anything. I simply highlighted the incompetence!

When we signed gosens this forum was delighted.
Signing lukaku on loan, most were delighted. He's never missed as many games with injury in a season before, no one could have seen that.
Correa was like 6th choice.

Gosens was considered a good deal but he hadn't played till March or something and everyone wanted to keep Perisic.

Lukaku was a terrible transfer, don't care how many supported it.

Correa wasn't a bad idea given the circumstances and the failures to bring priority transfers, he simply cannot cut it at a big club.

No one mentions how well signings like dzeko, mhiki, Acerbi, darmian, hakan, even onana etc have fared. In the last two summers we are net spend of like - 150mln and we are still a competitive team.

Apart from Onana where we don't know the signing fees yet and Darmian, all other deals were rather expensive. Useful surely, but at the expense of having squad depth.

 

[Harpsabu]

Whoa what?

Skriniar wants to stay after seeing us trying to sell starting players.
Marotta says okay, you're staying. I'll give you a new contract.
Five minutes later Skriniar hears that he's been offered to PSG, Barcelona, Manchester United, Tottenham, Chelsea and Manchester City.
He's pissed.
Marotta agrees to sell him for 50m.
Skriniar still doesn't want to leave.
Zhang then blows the initiation of any deal because he wants 80m for Skriniar.
Skriniar still mad because of the situation.
Marotta tells Skriniar he'll offer him a new deal soon.
Soon becomes 4 months later, just 2 months before Skriniar can talk with any team and PSG is mad that we played them like that (due to terrible internal organization) and give Skriniar money no one can refuse.

How did I admit that Marotta did the right thing here? Just because you wanted to sell Skriniar for 50m rather than renew for 5.5m doesn't mean I admitted anything. I simply highlighted the incompetence!




Gosens was considered a good deal but he hadn't played till March or something and everyone wanted to keep Perisic.

Lukaku was a terrible transfer, don't care how many supported it.

Correa wasn't a bad idea given the circumstances and the failures to bring priority transfers, he simply cannot cut it at a big club.



Apart from Onana where we don't know the signing fees yet and Darmian, all other deals were rather expensive. Useful surely, but at the expense of having squad depth.

If we're going with hindsight which everyone is using here, yourself included as you mention correa at the time not being a bad idea, we'd have been much better selling skriniar for 50m and buying Bremer. We hadn't received any higher bids for skriniar so we should have done that. Zhang fucked us there.

Yep, when gosens arrived perisic stepped it up yet another level. I can't criticise marotta for that because everyone thought we had robbed atalanta at the time for getting a player like gosens, considered the best lwb in the league for 20m.

Lukaku, thats fair that's your opinion. I was not expecting the same player back obviously but getting the league mvp from one year ago on loan isn't bad in my books. The way he's turned out however, again hindsight a wonderful thing.

Correa at the time yes we needed a starter but he's been an absolute dumpster fire.

Well, those deals are our squad depth. Where would we have been without mhiki this season. He's been crucial with the amount of time missed by brozovic.

One thing however and I think it's unis main gripe with marotta, we need to sign more youth rather than sticky plasters (which have done well). If we are truly a selling club now which let's face it, we are, we need to buy younger and smarter. That I agree on.