Comparing SFC to AS Roma after takeover and best player sales

[Giordano]

Is it interesting? It might be comparable though i am in no way saying saints are anywhere in the same league as AS Roma of course, but its an interesting situation to observe and certain aspects may happen or are about to happen at SFC..

 

So: Roma were involved in a big US inspired investment group takeover about 3 years ago. Recent league finishes were 6th in 2008-09, 2nd in 2009-10, 6th again in 2010-11, 7th in 2011-12 (when they got taken over) 6th in 2012-13 and 2nd this season.

 

What caught my attention was that within the first year or so of that new Debenedetto regime As Roma made some interesting decisions. As a consequence in the first full season they finished 6th under the new regime and this year they came 2nd.

 

What were the interesting decisions?

 

(1) They dumped the hot shot Manager Luis Enrique (you may have heard of him, he is now about to become the next barcelona coach..). They brought in Luis Garcia from Lille who at the time were playing attractive attacking football under him.

(2) They bought then sold the Brazilian international Marquinhos to PSG. He was supposedly the best defender in Italy after one season at Roma. But they sold him for treble what they paid after a year.

(3) They sold there leading goal scorer from last season. A certain Pablo Osvaldo who had broken into the Italian National team whilst at Roma.

(4) They bought and sold Erik Lamela from River Plate. The next great argentinan player. They unloaded him to Spurs for double after a year.

(5) They bought and sold Borini for double what they paid in about a year when he went to Liverpool.

(6) They bought Pjanic, Destro, Benatia and Strootman ~ all improved further and are easily top level stars much in demand (but strootman broke his leg i think so will not be going anywhere a while).

(7) They kept Club idols De Rossi and Totti on ridiculously stratospheric wages.

 

Now im not saying we should become like Roma - a bit of buying and selling and improving and selling on as main role of football club and win matches along the way - that's the typical italian seria A model of the last 5 years frankly, but in Italy it would not be regarded as quite so unusual to see Mopo off this season to a "higher" club or a number of good players sold (even young ones) if it was at a good price and left funds to buy some promising new ones from the market as long as the core was kept right.

 

In our case the core would be idols like Adz and Rickie, the sellable assets people like Luke and Dejan and the next ones to buy (and improve) players like Caulker and Schmeichel..A new coach could easily be that promising young (swiss...hmmm...) coach who did so well for Basle last year for instance~ Murat Yakin ... I'm not advocating doing that - just showing that's how others do work- and work successfully if you see they came 2nd last year (albeit in a weak league), so there are different operating models available.

Edited 19 May, 2014 by Giordano
added content and sp.

[buctootim]

Now im not saying we should become like Roma

 

Buying and selling is the only thing that makes sense for us. Buy in young developing talent who see us as a step up and sell them on when they think they can do better.

[red&white56]

Nice post Giordano - certainly food for thought.

 

I certainly wouldn't be disappointed if we sold players and then bought good young ones to replace them. To become a consistent top 6 club will not happen with one crop of good players, we need to be confident that we can repeat this process, i.e. bring on some from the academy and buy a few in. Only then will we be able to attract a consistent flow of youngsters to the academy and also become an attractive club for upcoming stars not in our academy.

[Giordano]

Thank you red&white56.

 

AS Roma fell away a little bit right at the endthis season but I was genuinely surprised at how well they did despite getting rid of nearly $100M worth of talent in a short space of time plus losing an obviously talented super-coach now confirmed as Barca new coach.

 

SFC could lose over $100M worth of talent and an obviously talented super-coach within a short period of time too....LS is $40M, Adz $30M, Osvaldo is $15M and Morgan or Dejan no less than $25m but put a Saints tracksuit on Yakin, and a few striped red shirts on Caulker, Schmeichel, Swansea's Jones and probably someone exciting like the Swiss international winger/MF Shaqiri to follow countryman Yakin as a replacement for Adz plus one mega CF (Mandzukic?) and would we struggle next season???

[Olallana]

Nice post as usual Giordano.

 

One thing that crosses my mind though is that clubs in Italy, Spain and so on can take a few punts and buy young players from South America (or to be more precise anywhere outside Europe) while english clubs cant do that due to work permit rules. They only need 1 or 2 to come good out of 10 to gain profit from it. I think I read somewhere that Parma had about 250 players on their books with most of them out on loans everywhere around Europe...(notable not only players from outside Europe in this case, they have hoovered up a great amount of young free transfers all across Europe)

[The9]

The one difference being that the UK's economy and Premier League income is a lot more stable than Italy's has been for the last couple of years, when ALL of their clubs were selling to anyone, as reflected in their useless European performances (and also due to their own debt issues, AC Milan's sudden drop down the league).

 

Not sure why we should resign ourselves to be a selling club when keeping our top players and growing what we have will enable us to grow every other element of the business and marketing and bring on-field success. We're in a better place than ever to build on where we are, and we've also got a shedload more money to pay the top players much more money. If we can't sustain that, then the club should be doing more to increase revenue streams to compete with the top sides. City may have a sheik, but they've only built a wider fanbase in the past 3 years with success. We are not far from being able to compete enough to build that sort of support, though it is a big step.

 

Not sure the owner is prepared to step across, but it's essential that we try it just to stay still. We're perfectly placed to jump the Europa-saddled teams now IF we choose to pursue that.