The Third Summer
There is an unfortunate misconception in football that successful teams should remain together forever.
This is nonsense.
Successful teams are dismantled with remarkable efficiency.
The moment a player reaches thirty and produces his best football, somebody from Saudi Arabia arrives with a suitcase full of money and a contract containing numbers that would cause an accountant to lose consciousness.
So it proved once again.
Sergej Milinković-Savić departed.
Mattia Zaccagni followed shortly afterwards.
Neither departure came as a surprise. Both had been magnificent throughout our title challenge. Both had reached the stage of their careers where one final lucrative move made perfect sense. More importantly, both wanted to leave.
There comes a point where a manager has two choices.
You either keep an unhappy thirty-year-old because of sentiment.
Or you sell him twelve months too early rather than twelve months too late.
Football has taught me that the second option is almost always the correct one.
It has also taught me that it feels considerably worse.
Replacing players like Sergej and Zaccagni isn’t really possible. You don’t replace footballers like that. You simply hope that enough younger players collectively become something similar.
Victor Osimhen arrived with the sort of reputation that immediately raises expectations to deeply unreasonable levels. Giuliano Simeone continued the club’s increasingly concerning obsession with signing the sons of famous footballers. Konstantinos Karetsas and Matteo Prati represented the future, while Matheus Nunes arrived on loan to remind me that Manchester City’s reserve players are generally better than most people’s first team.
Alexis Saelemaekers also returned.
At this point I’m beginning to suspect he simply enjoys living in Rome.
The squad looked younger.
Quicker.
Perhaps even better.
Which was fortunate.
Because after losing the title by a single point, “almost” was no longer going to satisfy anybody.
Least of all me.