De Ligt, Demiral, Bentancur, Rabiot, Mckenny, Arthur, Kulusevski, Dybala.
All are 26 year old and under. De Ligt and Dybala are already in the world class category, the rest are potential regular starters for the club and who knows maybe develop to become world class.
I think our long term strategy is evident.
Dybala and Bentacur were bought when previous GM was Marotta... Regardless, MDL is world class and can be relied upon week in week out. Demiral has solid potential. Rabiot was more miss that hit so far, definitely not a starting material atm. Lets see how Mckenny and Arthur fare but IMO our midfield is still the weakest part of the team. We dont have replacements for Cuadrado and Alex Sandro at fullback positions. We need to sort out our wingers, Costa and Berna, one is permanently injured while the other one lacks basic football intelligence. I hope Kulusevski will be far more reliable, but he is unknown at this point and it can go both ways. We are over reliant on 35 year old Ronaldo and buying 33 year old Suarez isnt investment for the future.
What is the backbone of this team? I fail to see leaders out there. When Id look at 2014/15 team, Id get good impression of what those lads would be capable of. Right now, there are too many question marks and we shouldnt have been in this position, if there had been better long term planning. We appointed Pirlo as a manager, who has 0 coaching experience, which is a huge risk and usually a desperation move.
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Because long term planning and getting promising talents diet when we got CR7 for 120m to push for UCL. A proven young player costs way to much so we need to compromise somewhere.
And yet we seem to be further and further away from CL dream every year. Hm... I dont think because of Ronaldo deal we had to renounce our usual sound strategy. Making a CL objective is setting up for fail, since there are too many variables involved.