AC Milan defender Davide Bartesaghi is set to spend the last of the season on loan at Frosinone after the two clubs managed to strike a deal, a report claims.
As has been reported by Matteo Moretto on X, the young defender is going to get first-team experience at Frosinone on a dry loan, meaning there is no option for Frosinone to make the deal permanent at the end of the season.
Having come through this season amidst an injury crisis, Bartesaghi now has little scope for first-team minutes thanks to the emergence of Alex Jimenez as a rotation option on both flanks.
A number of different clubs in Italy have made approaches for Bartesaghi over the past couple of weeks but he is expected to be at Frosinone imminently.
Moretto and Nicolo Schira (viaRadio Rossonera) have reported that the coaching of Eusebio Di Francesco was a key factor in Bartesaghi deciding to head south to the province of Lazio.
The Gialloblu have been playing an attractive brand of football this season which saw them start the campaign superbly. A poor run of form at the back end of 2023 has resulted in them trying to bolster the squad during this transfer window.
A good way for him to get more playing time.
Very few players who go on loan getting playing time and if they do it’s in a different system and different team mates.
The only Primavera players to have become established in the first team at Milan in the last 10 years never went on loan (Donnarumma, Calabria and De Sciglio) and most of those that did saw their Milan careers ended (Locatelli, Maldini, Colombo).
It sort of worked for Pobega and seemed to have worked by accident for Gabbia (who let’s be honest probably doesn’t have a future at the club even if we were to keep 10 clean sheets in a row).
Suso was on loan and when got back, he took the starting 11 spot.
And they say we need a new defender? No, we don’t. Barteshagi should have been given a chance ahead of Jimenez. I’m sick of the racists running the club.
Going on loan is a kiss of death. Clubs are just trying to get other clubs to raise the value of their players only to sell them in the future. Davide’s future is probably tied to what Theo decides to do and loaning a player to a team you play against isn’t a good sign either.
I need someone to explain it to me, why the loan is the issue in and of itself. Isn’t the logical alternative to not going on loan that the player is just sold because he is not up to it? How does not going on loan make a player more likely to have a long term career at Milan?
How does the player even get the chance to prove himself? Remember the time Pioli picked Florenzi to play at LB to make more mistakes than he was worried Bartesaghi was going to make? What was the response to that? To keep picking Florenzi.
The vast majority of Italian coaches think in very similar terms. That means it is only prodigies or those who are lucky enough to be coached by someone more open-minded that will get game time. EDF seems to be one of those more open-minded coaches.
The first goal is to get a talented 18 year old the match time required to make him a viable option to play for Milan. I don’t know why people think it is so reasonable to play 18 and 19 year olds when virtually no UCL vying sides do, at least not in the top 4 leagues. It is extremely rare.
The model is usually that the 18 and 19 year old plays in Portugal, France, Belgium or the Netherlands before making the step as a 21/22 year olds into the EPL and Serie A.
It’s the catch-22 of being Italian. You’re in a top league with conservative coaches and can’t get the game time as a junior. It is why the Azzuri fell off a cliff.
Using the Milan players as an example, the player whose career has stagnated the most in recent times is Daniel Maldini. He is the most talented player, by quite some way, to come out of the academy to date. He is the player who spent his first years out of the academy on the bench. Far lesser talents like Pobega, Brescianini and Colombo are forging decent careers thanks to the loans (and not sitting on the bench for 2 years).
The problem here is that we went from a powerhouse that had few financial restrictions, into a pretty disastrous banter era. About 8 years into that we started a project, to build something back up with youth (both at senior and academy level).
The simple reality aside is that the academy has produced maybe 5 players that we’d really want to keep around. That collapsed due to the uncertainty and aimlessness of the banter era.
Assuming he is good enough, and frankly I doubt it will be solely as a LB, he’ll need the Calafiori treatment, his still set is more suited to CB, Bartesaghi has no genuine hope of being a long term Milan player if he doesn’t get the opportunity to convince management that it doesn’t need to sign the next Pellegrino or getting him to Gabbia’s level of development as quickly as possible.
What this all says to me, more than anything, is that good players should not be playing Primavera as 18 year olds. Bartesahgi, for example, should already be on loan in the Serie C or Serie B. Issue there is getting the coaches to trust 17 to 19 year olds even at the lower level.
I’d say this what will happen if we get the U23 Serie C team. The Primavera side will fall away because it will get younger and the boys will be sent to Serie C to try to make them men a few years earlier than they would otherwise be.
Juventus has set out the model for a sustainable system that, in theory, might alleviate the need to guy senior players. The issue there is that the quality attackers it is producing do not fit into Allegri’s system and Allegri now seems to have re-established his hold on Juve. Imagine RDZ, or someone of that ilk, with opportunity to build a side on Fagioli, Miertti, Yildiz, Soule, Hujisens and Illing Jr. Unlike Brighton, Juve doesn’t really need to sell.
It’s simple.
What loans have actually worked out?
Everyone’s saying Gabbia’s loan was a stroke of genius but he only played 7 times under 4 different coaches. It’s a testament to his mental strength that he survived his 5 month loan.
What’s the alternative?
Fans demand better. Fans don’t accept this constant wheeling and dealing approach to developing elite athletes.
I guarantee you in any other sport or business or organisation or children’s lemonade stand this level of upheaval and failure would not be tolerated.
This all starts with the fans. The fans accept and celebrate the modern transfer market which gives clubs and agents permission to carry on. There should be riots.
And one can always counter you claims by this:
If Gabbia wasn’t on loan and were sitting on the bench watching others play and get 0 minutes instead of playing the 7 matches in Spain, would he have been up to the task and on this level that he currently is?
Short answer: no. Long answer: H*ll no.
Players get better by playing. Not by sitting on the bench watching others play. Fact.
How do you define a loan ‘working out’?
It seems to be that the loan only works when the player ends up playing most of his career at Milan.
Surely, the first question to ask is whether the player is good enough, even as depth for the Milan squad.
Some of the players clearly were, Locatelli being the prime example, but it’s not many. As I said in my post above, the banter era did not provide the stability that allowed the patience and long term planning required to progress youth players to the senior team, assuming they were good enough. It’s a 3 to 4 year project. We wouldn’t be relying on Thiaw as a 22 year old if we had the money to buy more established players. It speaks for itself if we’re trying to sign Buongiorno, doesn’t it?
Opportunity is also a significant factor. Would Calabria be thought of as a future player and captain if he was coming up under a player of Theo’s level? Or would we still be looking at the likes of Jiminez? I strongly suspect it is the latter and I do not disagree with that because I want the team to be as good as it is local.
Juventus has started the production line of players via its own academy and it is years ahead of us. It’s required the U23 side and still requires players being sent out on loan. Gatti in Serie B, Soule, Kaio Jorge and the Dutch kid at Roma for example.
You say above that players are not getting game time on loan. That does happen, there seems to be an unusually high number of players whose loans have been terminated mid-season this January but then the opposite is also true. Look at how much Pobega, Brescianini and Colombo have played throughout their various loans. Colombo has been given every opportunity by Palladino so far this season but only managed to score 3 goals in half a season. These guys will all likely have careers as at least journeymen at Serie A level. How were the loans not a success? Why isn’t Colombo’s current issue that he’s not been good enough? That’s not to say Colombo won’t grow further.
Even Juventus having reached this level is not guaranteed to retain as many of its youth products as you’d expect. That will be tied in with the compatibility of these players with Allegri’s system as much as anything else. He has no need for wingers, for example.
We know that Ajax achieved its status based on a style and it produced players for that style. Barcelona has done it too. This is the sort of thing Milan will need to do if it is going to turn into a club that develops its own talent.
It’s a 7 to 10 year project because the system will still only produce a few players of the quality desired. It’s going to require stacks of loans because unlike Ajax, Milan is trying to win Scudetti in the Serie A and that’s not done playing 18 to 20 year olds.
As I’ve said elsewhere, we’re going to need to formalise relationships with other sides, teams in Lombardy make sense to me, to use them to get match time into players.
If we want Conte that’s basically the end of the youth system as a producer of Milan players. It would be a new system, a different attitude, etc.
Say Liberali breaks out, where does he fit under Conte playing a 3-5-2? He gets sent on loan and does well but we then need to sell to buy players or to satisfy FFB settlement agreement. When he gets sold, was he sold because of the loan?
I’m with you when it comes to the absurdity of signing players in the way of Simic and Bartesaghi who had already shown good signs in the pre-season, particularly raw 21 year olds like Pellegrino. Trying to sign almost anyone available as a CB in winter is even worse. But I don’t think you’re looking deeply enough at how players are developed and what is happening on loan.