what are the advantages of co-ownership of a player

i never understood what the advantages are. why would the clubs want to share a player, while only 1 club can play him. dont i understand it right or what?

I'm not certain myself, but I think the Co-Ownership deal was worked in by the Italian FA since most of their teams started to go bankrupt after they went on mass spending sprees (sort of like Real Madrid did and how Man City do now).

Basically, player wages are shared between two clubs, meaning the club the player plays for doesn't have to pay all the wages and the club he is co-owned by only have to pay half his fee in order to sign him. It's a good way to sign young players.

Additionally, if you want to buy a co-owned player you have to negotiate with two clubs, meaning more money in the transfer.

It's mostly used by the bigger clubs. They buy 50% of a younger player that would not make their first team now, and they let him stay with the original club. That way, nobody else can buy him without their consent. If the player really turns out be good, then you buy the rest. If not, it's money wasted, but not as much as if you bought the player outright. I personally don't see the true merits of it that well, either. I never use it in FM, as I'd rather buy the player outright and then loan him out. A little more expensive now, but achieves the same end result.

I guess the advantage would be that if you buy 50% of him when he is young his value won't be that much.

Now if he doesn't turn out to be a good player you will have taken a calculated risk and have not lost so much money.

The other flip side is if he does turn out to be good you now only need the other 50%, usually if the player is playing for a small club they wont have the financial muscles to make a bid and you will get him relatively cheap.

The other good thing is that you pretty much hinder other big clubs from stealing him under your nose.

One of the benefits to co-ownership is if you have a player that you dont have much need for, then you can sell 50% of the player to another team. They get to pay his wages and use him. If they later become interested in him because of his good play, then you can sell the other half for more money than he was initially worth. Or the other way around, if a player is offered to you in a co-ownership, then you can buy 50% and if he performs, you can re-sell your part for a higher amount. One well known example:

Adriano was once co-owned by Inter and Parma. Inter sold a half share in Adriano to Parma for £4M, who had the use of the player and had to pay his wages. Adriano had great success at Parma, which led to Inter paying £13. 5M to buy out Parma's half share.

I've had some benefits with it. I just use it as a 'loan' then get good experience and then I sign them usually cheaper than usual. I've signed soem world class players for under £1m because the teams have no real money in Italy (apart from some of the obvious)

Very good article here> http://inbedwithmaradona.com/journal/2012/3/5/calcio-and-co-ownership.html

Explains it in full real life terms so I guess the same applies to FM

I don't know ..... Can any one help out me about this topic??????????