Paolo Maldini is a man of 1968. In the sense that he was born in 1968. From 1985 to 2009 he only ever played for Milan, as well as for the national team. Of the Rossoneri team he has become a sort of “flag”, moreover, son of the legendary defender Cesare, another great pillar of Milan’s history. The perfect DNA to embody the symbolic face of Milan: because he was a formidable footballer commendable for his talent, uncompromising professionalism, authority on and off the pitch, lucidity of judgments and analyses.
It has, over time, assumed a role of guide among the managers of the company or, in any case, of a great adviser for the fate of a team abandoned by Silvio Berlusconi to an uncertain fate, when it was no longer convenient for him to keep it at the levels he had managed to bring it by paying out, obviously, packages of billions (in lire) and millions (in Euros).
The sometimes opaque financial vicissitudes of the club accompanied the team’s less than excellent performances for years, until, due to astral coincidences and a fairly balanced and inspired set-up on the field, he won the Scudetto last season, with a line-up made up of a skilful mix of young champions and astute veterans, under the protective (and instructive) wing of Zlatan Ibrahimovicwhose spectacular and sorrowful farewell preceded by a few hours, the more controversial but logical one of Maldini, not by chance the architect of Ibra’s arrival at Milanello.
The new owner of Milan is an Italian-American whose last name is Cardinal and named Gerry. He is the founder of RedBird Capital Partners, he is 53 years old, he was born in Philadelphia. He has a personal fortune of one billion dollars, little compared to Berlusconi and is one of the many rich people made in the USA. He paid out $1.2 billion to grab Milan, of which he wants to be “owner and guardian”. He does not tolerate existential melodramas (the affective needs of the fans) and individual, it is a capitalist. Invest money to make it later. Without worrying about the consequences. Like motions of affection. Capitalism is an impersonal system. It aims at the progressive accumulation of wealth.
Football has now become a conspicuous planetary business. Within this system, the economic results, the data relating to them, and, above all, control count. Well, someone like Maldini who refuses to submit to Cardinale’s strict control is not in tune with the Milan project of RedBird Capital Partners. Plus, to his detriment, there’s the reality of a resounding failure: that of the transfer campaign after winning the Scudetto. In particular, the big disappointment caused by the purchase of the twenty-two year old Belgian Charles De Ketelaerepaid the beauty of 35.5 million euros (today he is already worth eight less, according to Transfertmarkt), was the straw that broke the camel’s back: the boy has always played badly, and the others bought have done worse by following the indications of Maldini and his faithful right-hand man Frederic Massara.
In the gospel of optimization which is the heart of advanced capitalist philosophy – I recall that Cardinale graduated from Oxford in 1991 and that he worked for Goldman Sachs for twenty years before founding his company in 2013 – the fifty million last summer they went to Maldini’s heavy damage, in the balance of a budget and management difficult to balance. In the United States, whoever loses, pays.
Now, let’s leave it aside sentimentality and all the rigmarole about football, a thankless sport, and how it became this sport, or the stories it tells, the emotions it arouses, the support that is often its controversial soul. Today’s reality is that romantic football is no more, as there are (almost) no more “flags”. Tradition and characters from the history of a club are now the trappings of a mythological past. The present is meaner. Samples transit where it is most convenient for them: they are professionals, basically they are right. Maldini knows it, he was, he continues to be so, even if not with the ball but for the ball. Lacking the billions to own a club, he is forced to work for whoever is. He had his chances, this is Cardinale’s reasoning, but he was wrong. He can’t expect to have carte blanche. Either he complies, or he leaves. Maldini has chosen. It is to be admired. Renounce the great showcase of (his) past and a stratospheric Milan that dominated Europe. But those were different times.
Some might find it difficult to argue that the end of the relationship with the company was caused by the (very strong) disappointments of the market and those of the fluctuating results, basically the money of the Champions they will come once again, and they are not few. With Maldini (and the coach Stefano Pioli) Milan he emerged from mediocrity projecting itself up to the top Italian and European leaders. It has a young and therefore improvable team, whose value has tripled in two years. He had the courage to let go of those who demanded too much, like the presumptuous goalkeeper Gigio Donnarumma, which the fans immediately renamed Dollarumma. He has found an exceptional replacement goalkeeper, perhaps a better one, the architect of success last season, goalkeeper Mike Maignan. He believed in the elderly but superb centre-forward Olivier Giroud.
So why was Cardinale so adamant in the face of the consistent claims of Maldini, who claims autonomy and freedom of maneuver? Because he wants the company to be led by him and his staff (he hypocritically uses the capitalist concept of “we”, while the system fuels competition and fierce rivalry, exploits teamwork). Cardinale liquidates Maldini because Milan, the result of the intuitions and courageous choices of the former Rossoneri captain, has enormous prospects and has a development project in which there is no place for independent areas. For months on Maldini’s head there had been the sword of Damocles ready to decapitate him: the bankruptcy acquisition campaign. And, most of all, the charisma that in the long run would overshadow the great maneuverer of society.
I don’t doubt that losing Paolo, or marginalizing him, which is even worse, either painful e unfair, from the point of view of the Milan fans (of which I am honored to have always been a part). Maldini is part of AC Milan’s history, in the saga of great captains like his father Cesare, Gianni Rivera, Franco Baresi. Him fidelity to the colors, militancy without buts and ifs towards a sports and football association that is part of Milanese popular culture. The fear of many is that the consequences for Milan could be more serious than one can imagine today, with fresh news and father dead. The story, indeed the Maldini “case”, is in fact proof of the contradictions in which football is sinkingin all shades of drama: from sport to mere entertainment governed only by the power of capital, where the protagonists deceive the stands with their gestures in which they emphasize the commitment and dedication to the colors of the shirts they wear, except to change it to the first rustle of banknotes, if they are more than they already pocket.
Professionalism has neither recognition nor borders, let alone if it believes in the values and ethical codes of the communities for which it is temporarily fighting. There is nothing less openly idealistic. Unfortunately.