Pazienza and Pirlo are the only 2 Italians brought to the team so far. Pazienza is a backup, and Pirlo, as evidenced by his performance yesterday against Spain, still has more than enough left in the tank
I will agree with you on the unproven coach part, but to say that he was a crappy former player is way out of line, Cron.
Sissoko was sold for 8 million. More than a fair price, IMO.
Granted, the way things went down with Melo wer odd to say the least, but it was pretty evident that Melo was not going to be in the starting 11 for this team.
You seem to forget that despite Pirlo, Pazienza, we also bought the other 4 Italian loaned players, even the ones who have failed.
6 New Italian players and the current 6 Italian players will form our Italian core.
We systematically eradicated most of the stranieri we had, even the ones who had a way much better season (Melo, sorensen) to the Italians we have kept.
Our only non Italian forward is the Italianized Vucinic.
The center of our midfield has increased its Italian percentage, the center of our defence is still as Italian as it gets and we were forced to buy foreigner fullbacks because a decade of Italian failures like Molinaro, Grosso, Motta, DC is enough, but we have tried as much as possible to keep it Italian.
Only Vidal is a foreigner coming from a foreign league, the project ItalJuve is still a go and i suspect this is one of the reasons we dont buy Lugano and Vargas...
(the other is that we have wasted our budget on yet another average CM and SS)
As for Conte, i mean crappy coach of course, who also happens to be a former player and Italian of course.
It doesnt matter if he was good as a player or not, thatsa completely irrelevant, the point is not to get a crappy coach, just because he is cheap, Italian and a former player...
We bought Sissoko at the last year of his contract, in the middle of the season for about 12mil, the starting price was 16mil, we sold him 8mil,
earning half of a players market value could be considered decent these days, as we have embraced mediocrity on every level, but unfortunately Sissoko's case does not represents the average transfer deal we made. As Melo doesnt either.
The average deal we made is failing to make a cent from Tiago and be forced to release him. Failing to offload, Amauri, or Iaq for any given price.
Last year Marotta has an excuse, their salaries and limited time to find suitable candidates, but this year these excuses are not valid anymore, at least at the same degree...he ought to do better than... nothing...
There is no excuse about the Melo case, we have wasted 25+15mil to replace him with Vidal, despite we already bought 2 new CMs.
We should have at least try to keep him as a sub instead of Pazienza, 1.5mil of extra salary for a far more useful sub, wouldnt hurt us that much.
And maybe after a decent year, we could sell Melo for a decent sum.
That was just plain stupidity...