Theory:
Our Italian players for whatever reason are the ones that stay longer or at least are easier to persuade to stay long term. Don't know why we can't with foreign players maybe it's because our league is taking forever to grow again and Spain/England has more to offer in that sense (Germany too). I think that's why we are suddenly back on the market for more Italian players because long term we will have less of an issue keeping them? Just throwing ideas out there...
Well, you're always going to have more ease retaining Italians because of:
1) Language
2) Cultural fit
3) Wanting to be near family
For foreign players it often comes down to money. Sure there are other factors: language (I'm sure spanish speaking South American players prefer Spain all things held equal), strength of the competition, playtime, strength of the club. You do have exceptions, but it in this day and age when the Italian league is clearly behind, a strong domestic strategy is prudent.
This.
Also I think that sadly we have reached a ceiling in terms if growing. We are in a position that our team is very competitive, but for the next and final step..we lack the funds. This make the situation difficult for marotta and the board because the players we need to win the CL are expensive in transfer and demand huge wages.
This doesnt mean we cant improve as a team, so thats why you see us going after younger players in hopes of them turning into stars. The problem with this is that once they turn into stars, we will most likely receive huge offers for them and they wil be offered huge sums of money to tempt them abandon ship. In a way this helps us because we raise funds to continue developing the team by reinvesting it, but the sad part is that until we find a way to compete financially with the bigger economic teams..we will continue being a top tier seller.
We also are facing the problem of our current stars getting tempted by new adventures and money. And again..this also has to do with us being so dominant in serie A....after a couple campaigns i can understand why some foreign players look for new motivations to continue pushing themselves into new objectives. We have won everything in italy many times...theres nothing to prove nor to win. Not until our rivals put us by the sword and force us to compete to our limits.
We simply cant find a way to continue growing, and what we hace reached in earnings from the CL is our ceiling. As long as serie A continue being piss poor...we will be limited.
We can just hope that this new branding strategy gives some results... but until i see them, we cant know how substantial that income will be.
For the time being...im pretty sure we will try to continue pounving on opportunities, not so expensive ones... and at the same time trying to stay competitive until our limits let us.