Fabrizio Romano is an acclaimed journalist whose coverage of the football transfer window has been featured by leading news publishers, including The Guardian and Sky Sport.
Skrill is proud to sponsor his Here We Go podcast, where Fabrizio reveals football transfer news, rumours and deals every week.
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How to find out a transfer market scoop? Sometimes, it’s face-to-face catch ups and making sure you’re where the negotiations are happening that makes all the difference. Ultimately, you need to be in the right place at the right time.
In my experience as a journalist, spending long days in the center of Milan meeting with contacts has been crucial to learning transfer news as it happens.
Sports directors and agents of many European teams – not only the Italian ones – come to Milan for meetings and negotiations. You might meet them in restaurants, bars or in hotels.
It was in January 2015 at the end of a long day that I saw the sporting director of Juventus, Fabio Paratici, in a hotel five minutes from the famous Piazza Duomo. This was a stroke of luck: Maurizio Zamparini, president of Palermo at the time, had left the same hotel shortly before.
That was the first meeting organized by Juventus for the signing of Paulo Dybala, one of the stars of Serie A and international football, and now a brand ambassador for Skrill.
The negotiation went on for some time but everything started from that meeting. At that point, those involved denied the news because it was still January and the transfer was due to conclude in the summer.
But Juve knew it had to move early in its efforts to buy Dybala, anticipating competition from other clubs both in Italy and overseas. In the end, their proactive approach paid off: Juventus signed a great deal after an historic negotiation in the heart of Milan.
Here we have just one example of how exploring the major hotels and restaurants can lead to a brilliant transfer market scoop.