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00:00It was just a window, which then gradually became a pool villa.
00:06Once upon a time, until the mid-1990s, there was the autumn repair market.
00:12Contrary to the summer one, it didn't even have a seat with the dedicated boxes for the negotiations.
00:18It was a short November surplus of 10-15 days, phone calls, urgent meetings, some repairs and that's it.
00:27Maximum one per team.
00:29Today, however, there is the great itinerant event of the winter market,
00:33with so many non-stop live shows, final countdowns like the summer one.
00:38It's him, the January football market, a joy for the specialized journalists and for the fans who always want to dream.
00:46Something that rarely happened for the old Italian repair market,
00:51where everything was defined in a few days of October or November.
00:56The last old-style repair market is the one that closed on Thursday, November 9, 1995,
01:06and was marked for Milan by the move of Patrick Vieira from Cannes to the Club Rosso Nero.
01:14Vieira, how much did you cost?
01:16At the time, in fact, 10 billion for a 19-year-old, albeit emerging,
01:21were against the trend, a very high price for the autumn market.
01:25But Mario Yelpo remembers, on the other hand, the market of two years earlier, that of November 1993.
01:32The November market was called the repair market,
01:35so the big teams didn't usually have to do big things in this market.
01:41Well, in my time, as far as my experience was concerned,
01:45I don't remember any big hits, with the exception of Glamorosa,
01:50the strongest defensive midfielder in Milan's history, in my opinion.
01:54Marcel Desais arrived in November, right after I arrived,
01:59in the sense that I arrived instead in June,
02:02not until the end of the season, when I arrived in November,
02:05as a strong player, but not as a decisive player.
02:09Instead, he proved to be the strongest defensive midfielder I've ever seen.
02:14That year was incredible, and I'm not saying it was his merit,
02:19a double win of the season because of the champions,
02:22but in short, the season definitely changed.
02:25From the new arrival, he became essential.
02:28During a Sampdoria-Milan game on 31 October 1993,
02:32a game in which Milan won 2-0 and then lost 3-2 for a goal from Tukwokwe Rudgulit,
02:39Zvonimir Boban, Menisco, Hay, got injured.
02:43Injured by Jean-Pierre Papin, who knew him well,
02:46who was his team-mate at the Olympique Marseille,
02:49Adriano Gagliani at that point began to court Marcel Desais.
02:54The historic red-and-black manager knew how to get him to Milan,
02:58and had a very good relationship with the president of Marseille, Tapie.
03:03However, in a historical context of spending review,
03:06inside the Fininvest led by Dr. Franco Tattoo,
03:10if Gagliani had asked Silvio Berlusconi for this acquisition,
03:14he would have embarrassed him, both in case of a positive and negative response.
03:19At that point, here is the blow that Gagliani himself defines as crazy.
03:24He goes to France, directly to the house of President Tapie without telling anyone,
03:29and does everything without telling anyone.
03:32He took a risk, but Marcel arrived in November 1993,
03:36almost hidden, as the journalist Umberto Zappelloni recalls.
03:41I remember well the autumn market of 1993,
03:45when Marcel Desais arrived in Milan.
03:48Boban got injured, and Gagliani invented a surprise acquisition.
03:51I remember that I went to the presentation, I worked for the newspaper,
03:55but I didn't take it very well, because instead of Boban,
03:58a completely different player arrived.
04:00But then, over time, you understand the importance of Desais,
04:03who transformed him into a rock in that Milan,
04:07and then with the pearl of the Athens final,
04:10when Cruyff said, well, we took Romaglio,
04:13and Desais took him to the last market.
04:15Well, Desais made the difference in that final, and not only in that final.
04:19A great blow of the Gagliani-Braida couple,
04:22among other things, because there were times when Franco Tattoo tried to cut Milan's expenses,
04:27as well as other properties of Silvio Berlusconi.
04:30Well, Gagliani invented the way to bring home Desais from Marsiglia di Tappia.
04:36Desais became the first player in history to win two consecutive Champions Leagues.
04:41A great acquisition, he was a rock in Milan,
04:43even if at the beginning he was looked at with a little distrust.
04:46In short, he had to take the place of someone like Boban,
04:49he was not exactly the same player,
04:51but he was very useful to that Milan.
04:53Who can say if the repair market once was better than today,
04:58even if the position of the Association of Footballers
05:00was that for a certain period of time to maintain that it was actually better.
05:05Then, however, everything evolves and everything is updated.
05:08For sure, that autumn window opened in a period
05:12in which everyone could still reverse the trend of a season.
05:16Above all, it removed two months of voices and indiscretions
05:20on players who may now be facing the team they are dealing with.
05:25In any case, in its original version,
05:27the repair market of October and November
05:30prevented the transition to a club of the same category,
05:34unless they never stepped foot on the pitch.
05:37The first signs of the times that changed
05:40in a moment of transition from the autumn market to the winter one,
05:43institutional and organized in January,
05:46arrive in December 1997,
05:49when, to make a lot of noise,
05:51it is the passage of Edgar Davids from Milan to Juventus,
05:55for reasons that are now repeated by the journalist Franco Ordine.
06:00One of the most notorious cases,
06:03during the famous and highly awarded management of Silvio Berlusconi at Milan,
06:09of management-error,
06:11was that of Edgar Davids.
06:14You will surely remember him,
06:16the Dutch midfielder,
06:18who arrived at cost zero,
06:20together with two of his colleagues,
06:23and then gave in to Juventus for 10 billion.
06:29On that occasion, there were essentially two reasons.
06:33One, the first of an economic nature,
06:35having bought it at zero and having resold it for 10 billion,
06:40well, in short, it was a very significant surplus for those times.
06:44The second was of a disciplinary nature.
06:47In the sense that Davids was at the center of some episodes,
06:52not really brilliant,
06:55and had in some way broken the regulation of healthy behavior,
07:01which prevails in Milan.
07:03In that circumstance, two comments came out,
07:07which, in my opinion, must be remembered.
07:09The first of Fabio Capello, coach of that Milan,
07:12in which he recommended to the company to sell it abroad,
07:16only that offers did not arrive from abroad,
07:19and therefore Gagliani was forced to sell it to Juventus.
07:23The second opinion was that of Silvano Ramaccioni,
07:27who concluded the whole operation by saying,
07:30you can buy a player wrong,
07:32you must not be wrong to sell it.
07:35There was then a time when the Milanese autumn market
07:38did not speak French at the entrance,
07:41and not even Dutch at the exit,
07:43but English in the corridor.
07:46It is the autumn story, between October and November,
07:49of Jimmy Greaves,
07:51a striker who shone and scored goals in Chelsea,
07:55a team that, however, was not at his height.
07:58At the end of the 1950s, Chelsea never won,
08:02but he, Greaves, wanted to win.
08:04The Blues had understood they had to give up,
08:07but they did not want to strengthen their rivals in the league.
08:10In the end, Milan was introduced,
08:12and Jimmy Greaves moved to northern Italy
08:15in the summer of 1961 for 80,000 pounds,
08:19an incredibly high figure for a footballer at that time.
08:23Greaves, however, did not want to leave it in England.
08:26The transfer to Milan was done a little unknowingly.
08:30The Red-Black training sessions were then rigid.
08:33This did not go well for Greaves,
08:35who never disdained one or two beers.
08:39From time to time, they say, but perhaps a little more often.
08:43Despite the goal at the debut with Milan,
08:46Greaves' frustration was constantly growing,
08:48so much so that the London striker left Italy after a few months
08:52with rumors in the corridor,
08:54precisely thanks to the autumn market,
08:56as journalist Giuseppe Pastore recalls.
08:59The story of Jimmy Greaves has always made me laugh,
09:02who in 1961 started very strong,
09:05scoring several goals in the first ten days,
09:08having a terrible relationship with Nereo Rocco.
09:11One evening, before Milan-Lecco,
09:13on Saturday evening, Cesare Maldini and José Altafini,
09:17in the retreat, hear rumors in the corridor,
09:20open the door and see Greaves with his shoes in his hand,
09:23who is going down the stairs and is abandoning the retreat.
09:26Clearly Rocco is punctually informed
09:29of all these intemperances,
09:32so it's a bad relationship.
09:34In the autumn of 1961,
09:37Tottenham paid him 99,999 pounds
09:41to take away the pressure,
09:43according to manager Bill Nicholson,
09:46to be the first player to pay 100,000 pounds.
09:50So they pay him one pound less,
09:53and with the place released by the foreign club,
09:56Milan will buy from Boca Juniors Dino Sani,
09:59who seemed boiled,
10:01and who is still a great director,
10:03with the famous four goals of Altafini,
10:05and Milan will win the Cup and the Champions League.