I really don't recall that many top young Italian talents leaving the league in recent years, especially if bigger domestic clubs were interested. But let's stick to Juve and we pretty much snatched every promissing young Italian player of late, from Berardi, Rugani, Zaza, Sturaro, prolly Mandragora and Sensi soon, even foreign ones like Dybala. There will always be some exceptions so in the old days you had starting Azzurri RB Panucci playing for Real Madrid, or already mentioned Vieri for Atleti. But if Juve are keen on some young player from the minnows, we'll definitely be his preferred destination to England or Spain and we can pay fairly well as already seen this summer, if the player in question is seen as fitting.
Neither Italian club wanted Immobile.
Who left the league that was actually worth a shit,
when we could afford it ?
Rossi, got stolen by manchester united before anyone in italy could give him a senior contract. Parma is still mad as fuck about it. However, he never was a big loss.
Verratti ? Special situation. His star rose in 10-11, and he confirmed 11-12 his exceptional potential.
What was the situation then ? after 10-11 we were in a crappy position and we needed players who could deliver right now. after 11-12 we had a solid base and started to secure the young talents. However, after 2 exceptional seasons, other clubs caught wind of it, and Napoli and PSG intervened. Wich is the death penalty.
What if its today ? Today we'd sign verratti after 10-11 and loan back to pescara. OR, we'd act like we did on dybala, and dish out a significant sum. Iirc there is talk of us spending 8-12 mil on some kid this january. Well this basically. Today we have that solid base, and we can go in early with cash for these, before they catch foreign attention.
Darmian ? Not worth his asking price for us. We decided that we'd continue with licht for the time beeing, while keeping tabs on several rb's in italy. Meanwhile, we bought Sandro who at worst is twice as good as Darmian.
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TBH I didn't even read/see your point, Zach, I just picked up the tail end of the discussion. But we can never have that hegemony in Serie A. We could win 10 consecutive scudetti. We can't recreate the political, sporting or social conditions Bayern enjoy, we can't even take the best Italian players if they play for a hated rival. Which as Juventus is pretty much everyone. Bayern don't have real rivals, only bitches.
There are only a few actual rivals that can do this. Milan, Inter and Roma. None of the other rivals have a serious draw for young talents (talking -20). its about dishing out for these kids before the others can.
its also interesting to note, juventus has fans in every town of italy. It used to be the big point on why we never sold out delle alphi. Well, this would certainly benefit from that.
You are 17 and juve comes. You'd need to be damn hotheaded to say no.
Hence if we went for maldini back in the day, early enough, we could have had him. And his father was a milan legend. But that huge draw of the 1978 azzurri side that was full of juve players