What if we sold Caldara and kept Benatia then?
Why would we sell Caldara, i don't understand where you are going with this.
Our team as it was, it was balanced, two great windbacks and two Italian mediocre subs for them.
Chiellini, who is one of the best CBs in the world and Benatia, who is barely better than Bonucci
And two very promising youngsters, who are good enough to be our subs now, against anyone and would form the future backbone of our defense and NT.
In the current transfer market, promising youngsters are overvalued, but still have relatively small salaries, so they were perfect subs.
If we could upgrade our weakest link for another top CB, without losing money, like the rumored sale of Benatia to EPL for 20mil and Godin's clause for 20mil. That would be perfect.
Now the balance is broken. Benatia at his age, will certainly have more problems to be Bonucci's sub, than Caldara would at being his our Godin's. Because he would know that time is on his favor.
Caldara was the perfect subs and good enough to be a future starter without needing to spend again in 3 years from now.
Now Benatia will have issues at being Bonucci's sub, esp if the later performs worse than him.
And what's worse is that we sold Caldara very very cheap.
Caldara is as promising as Rugani and Romagnoli, it is acceptable to sell him, if the need is great, but for a price close to his market value. When Milan declined 60mil offers for Romagnoli and we declined a 55mil for Rugani, it's unacceptable to only sell out for 35mil.
And completely unacceptable to accept a 35mil value for a washed up player of Bonucci's age.