Sassuolo and Milan show Serie A's middle class lives by selling well

Key takeaways

• A Serie A fixture between a provincial club and a historic giant also shows how the Italian transfer market moves players and money between clubs of different sizes.
• Italian deal structures such as loans with an obligation to buy let large clubs defer costs and let smaller clubs secure fees they can plan around.
• Serie A's squad list rules, which reserve places for club-trained and association-trained players, give a value to clubs that develop players and then sell them.
• Sassuolo's ownership by an industrial group lets the club hold out for a fair price rather than sell in a hurry, and that is the core of its model.

Sassuolo's model depends on selling, and Milan's on buying well

Search data from Google in Italy shows strong interest in Sassuolo against AC Milan, with people also looking up the Serie A table and where each club stands in it. This article does not deal with results, form or line-ups. Its subject is what the pairing shows about how Italian football's transfer economy is built.

The argument is simple. Sassuolo is a club from a small town in Emilia-Romagna that plays its home games in nearby Reggio Emilia. Its income cannot come close to that of a club with Milan's global following. Clubs of its size get one dependable route to growth, and that is the transfer market: they find players, develop them, show them off in Serie A and sell them for more than they paid. Milan has the opposite problem. Its revenue is large but so are its wage bill and its ambitions. For a club like that, the cost of a mistake in the market is higher than the cost of a sale.

So when the two clubs meet, the game is more than a contest between two squads. It is a contest between two business models that depend on each other. Clubs like Milan need clubs like Sassuolo as places to send young players and as sources of proven Serie A talent. Clubs like Sassuolo need clubs like Milan as buyers. The sections below set out three pieces of evidence for this view, then the strongest objection, then what would change the conclusion.

Italian deal structures are built for buyers who want to defer cost

The first piece of evidence is the shape of the deals the Italian market prefers. A permanent transfer paid up front is only one option. Italian clubs often use the loan with an obligation to buy (prestito con obbligo di riscatto). The buying club takes the player on loan for a season, sometimes for a loan fee, and agrees in the contract to make the transfer permanent at a fixed price. Often that obligation applies only once certain conditions are met, such as a set number of appearances or the club's league position.

There is a reason for this. In accounting terms, a transfer fee is usually spread across the years of the player's contract. A loan with an obligation pushes the first of those charges into a later financial year. For a large club managing its costs against UEFA's financial rules and its own budget, that delay is worth having. It also lets the buyer test the player at its own expense before the full cost lands.

For the selling club, the trade-off is different but still useful. A loan with an obligation is close to a guaranteed sale, even though the money arrives later. A smaller club can build its budget around a fee that is contractually due, instead of waiting for an offer that may never come. A related tool is the loan with an option to buy (diritto di riscatto), which gives the buyer a choice instead of a commitment. That suits the buyer more and the seller less, and how hard a provincial club pushes for an obligation rather than an option shows how much bargaining power it has.

Two more tools complete the picture. A sell-on clause gives the original club a share of any future fee if the player is sold again. A buy-back clause gives the original club the right to bring the player back for a set price. Both are common in Italy. Both let a smaller club share in a player's rising value after he has left. These tools exist because the market has regular sellers and regular buyers, and both sides want protection.

Squad list rules give a value to clubs that develop players

The second piece of evidence comes from registration. Serie A clubs must name a squad list with a limited number of senior players. Some places on that list are reserved for players trained by the club itself and some for players trained anywhere in Italy. Players under a set age can be registered outside the main limit.

This has a clear effect on the market. A player trained in Italy is worth more to an Italian club than an otherwise identical player from abroad, because he helps meet the quota. A club like Sassuolo, which can give young players regular first-team football in Serie A, adds two kinds of value to them: the value that comes from playing time and the value that comes from where they were trained. When a larger club buys such a player, it is buying a footballer and also solving a registration problem.

Italy's limits on signing players from outside the European Union work in the same direction. Big clubs have only a limited number of places for non-EU signings from abroad, so players already registered in Italy are especially useful to them. A player who has already spent seasons in Serie A at a mid-sized club arrives already registered, already used to the league and with nothing to prove about adapting. Buyers pay for that lower risk, and sellers can charge for it.

None of this needs a particular player as an example. The structure alone creates a lasting reason for top Italian clubs to buy from inside Serie A, and for mid-table Serie A clubs to act as places where players are developed and finished.

Industrial ownership lets a provincial club refuse a bad price

The third piece of evidence is the kind of owner a club has. Sassuolo is publicly known to be backed by the Mapei group, the building materials company whose name is on the club's stadium. This matters for the market. A club with nothing behind it except its football income often has to sell when money is tight, and buyers know when that is the case. A club backed by a stable industrial owner can say no.

That ability to refuse is what makes a selling club work. A selling club that is forced to sell is just a supplier taking whatever price is offered. A selling club that can wait can put buy-back and sell-on clauses into contracts, insist on obligations instead of options, and keep a player for another season if the offers are too low. Corporate backing does not make Sassuolo a rival to Milan in revenue. It does make Sassuolo a harder club to negotiate with, and that is a different and arguably more lasting advantage.

For the buying club, this changes the calculation. Milan cannot assume that a mid-table club will give in. It has to decide whether the player justifies the asking price or whether a cheaper option exists abroad. Seen this way, each Sassuolo against Milan fixture brings together two clubs that may well face each other across a negotiating table at another point in the year.

The strongest case against this argument

The fairest objection is that the argument makes a messy market look too tidy. Milan is not only a buyer. Like almost every European club, it also sells. It sends young players out on loan, often to clubs Sassuolo's size, and sometimes sells players it developed itself. Seen that way, the flow can run the other way, with the big club supplying the smaller one and the smaller club developing a player the bigger one could not find a place for.

A second objection is that Sassuolo is also a buyer. Its squad is not made up only of its own academy players. It signs players from the lower divisions, from abroad and from larger clubs. Calling it "a seller" may describe its net position over time, but it misses how much of its business is about bringing players in.

A third and more serious objection is that the transfer market is not two-sided at all. The biggest buyers for players from Italian mid-table clubs may be abroad, especially in England, where broadcast income is far higher. If that is true, the relationship between Sassuolo and Milan is not really one of supplier and customer. Both are working in a market whose prices are set elsewhere. Milan could then be just as much a seller to foreign clubs as Sassuolo, and the gap between them would be smaller than the argument suggests.

Finally, sporting results come into it. A relegation changes everything for a club like Sassuolo: income falls, the most valuable players can leave cheaply, and the model has to be rebuilt. The argument assumes that Serie A status is stable, and for a provincial club it never is.

These objections are serious. They suggest that "selling well" is a necessary condition for a club like Sassuolo but not a full account of how it works.

What evidence would change this conclusion

Several kinds of evidence would weaken or strengthen the argument, and none of them is set out here because none can be verified for this article.

The most direct is a club's net transfer position over a long period. Clubs' published accounts and the Italian football federation's financial reports would show whether a club like Sassuolo has steadily earned more from sales than it has spent on signings. If it has not, the argument that it lives by selling would fail.

A second is where buyers come from. If most players leaving Italian mid-table clubs go abroad instead of to Italy's biggest clubs, the domestic supplier-and-buyer relationship described here would matter less than claimed.

A third is how deals are structured. If Italian clubs have moved away from loans with obligations and towards straight permanent transfers, perhaps because accounting or regulatory rules have changed, the evidence about deferred costs would carry less weight.

A fourth is any change to Serie A's registration rules. If the quotas for players trained in Italy were removed or tightened, the value that clubs like Sassuolo add through playing time and where a player was trained would change with them.

Until that evidence is set out, the case holds up but is not proven. The fixture is a regular reminder that in Italian football, the market between clubs of different sizes is part of how the league works.

Sources and further reading

• Google Trends data for Italy, which shows the search interest in the fixture and the Serie A standings
• Lega Serie A's published regulations on squad lists and player registration
• The Italian football federation's (FIGC) rules on transfers, loans and the signing of non-EU players
• Clubs' published annual financial statements, for how transfer fees are accounted for