Gerry Cardinale’s choice to deprive himself of the Maldini – Massara couple starts from afar…
– Before talking about what is happening in the Rossoneri club in these hours, which is difficult to predict, but less strange than it seems, it is necessary to frame the figure of Gerry Cardinale: founder and CEO of “RedBird Capital Panters”: an investment management company that last summer took control of AC Milan with a total transaction worth €1.2 billion, half of which in the form of a vendor loan granted by Elliott Management Corporation to the Cardinal himself, which allowed the Paul Singer Fund to retain two seats on the board. Little more than a capital shift, at least initially, so much so that the new AC Milan owner was rarely seen in our area during the season that had just ended and, above all, he had decided to give management continuity by maintaining the structure that had brought the Scudetto back to the Rossoneri and renewing Pioli’s contract;
– The continuity between the two funds, both with stars and stripes, does not end here. The common management-level keyword is “sustainability“. Beautiful word, in a football like the Italian one that struggles to stand on its own feet and under the “Settlement Agreement” regime with UEFA, but which hides another thing behind it, in a not too veiled way: profit A profit which, for the previous owners, had been around five hundred million Euros, net of all the investments made and which Gerry Cardinale would like to obtain using the “Moneyball”: a method based on the players’ statisticsexperienced with success at the beginning of the millennium in Baseball (to the point of being told in the film of the same name with Brad Pitt) and, already experienced in football in Liverpool (in which, however, Cardinale holds a minority stake) and Toulouse, which certainly cannot be compared to Milan from any point of view: historical, economic or sporting;
– The basic problem in all of this is that a method based on statistics can work in Baseball, where numbers are the masters, but it is decidedly more complicated to apply in football: a much more dynamic sport rich in factors, where a duck from a goalkeeper or a storm can decide the fate of a season. In short, it is one thing to try to win by keeping the accounts in order and simultaneously trying to enhance some young people, another is to hope to do so by depriving oneself of figures such as Maldini and Massara: two great football connoisseurs (unlike Cardinale who up until a year ago didn’t even know how many Champions League Milan had won) who, despite being fallible in their humanity, in recent years had amply demonstrated their ability to put together a squad competitive without wasting money, leading to wearing the AC Milan jersey of champions such as Leao (who has already shown his perplexities through social media), Maignan and Theo Hernandez, without forgetting the various Tonali & Co. In all this, the promotion of Moncada as DS it could help, but the truth is that Maldini’s personality and “name” have a specific weight that is irreplaceable by any of the ventilated names. A weight that has also had a hold on the public, which without him could decide to boycott the season ticket campaign and stop filling up the San Siro on every occasion, as it has done in recent seasons;
– What may have led Cardinale to the decision is easy to guess: the ex-Captain and Rossoneri flag has a cumbersome, sometimes suffocating personality and a self-esteem that may have led him not to maintain the attitude that the owner of an American fund he is used to expecting from those he does not consider more than resources at his disposal, i.e. extreme respect and little say in the matter. This is what could be attributed to Maldini in behavioral terms, but it would have been a justified means in order to obtain something more for Milan than him, where he also had to take responsibility for the choice of Charles De Ketelaere, despite having a player like Paulo Dybala in hand (later joined Rome), for mere economic reasons, with the club that would have identified in the Belgian (whose bankruptcy can only be decreed after another season) the ideal profile to inject a bit of technique into the squad, but without forgetting the guidelines for the start of the season;
– Finally, with the exception of those who have already done it for some time, there is doubt about the figure of Pegs, not only from a professional point of view, but also from a human point of view, given that in this situation he is the only one to emerge victorious, at least for the moment. The Rossoneri coach, who took over from Giampaolo in October 2019, had not started his Rossoneri adventure well, finding no remedy to the fatal problems of his predecessor, which culminated in the humiliating 5-0 defeat inflicted by Atalanta on the Rossoneri before the break , which for everyone would have been the perfect opportunity for another sacking. Just on that occasion, Paolo Maldini himself intervened to take responsibility for confirming the coach and supporting him with an important figure like that of Zlatan Ibrahimovic, then became fundamental for future successes not only as a footballer (at least the first two seasons), but also and above all as a reference figure in a locker room hitherto without a leader, transforming a frightened team into a winning team. The thanks of the current AC Milan coach have been seen in the last two months when, as soon as he found himself having to question his work in a season with more shadows than lights, he saw fit to offload the now former director of the area technique and make a clean sweep of all the new signings except Thiaw (valued almost by chance), unloading all the blame on the market and clamoring for an intervention by the owners, locking down his place on the bench.