We had a generation of players not ageing wel: Higuain, Pjanic (31 now), Costa (31 now) and even Marchisio stopped way to early due to injury. Let’s not forget Sandro aswel.
This club made a lot of expensive mistakes with judging players off-pitch professionalism. Higuain and Pjanic for example were hard-working professionals on the pitch, but clearly let themselves go in terms of fitness and training off pitch. Sandro and Costa lack professionalism both on and off the pitch. It’s really unfortunate when you look at all the players in their early to mid-30s around Europe who are still performing at a very high level, that we made quite a few bad choices in there.
The Higuain move was the same play as Ronaldo, we thought we'd arrived at the finish line and just needed to add guaranteed goals to push us over the edge and get a CL win. We definitely too our eyes off the ball in other areas though.
World Class/borderline world class players on all three levels. I think they call that a foundation. Add Rovella, Fagioli, another younger mid, and hopefully a LB like Udogie and we’re cookin.