An aligned project for the long-term: Krösche, Amorim, Hardung and Gardiner’s Milan

Today, four major roles have been filled by AC Milan and it could well be the start of something good in the long run. 

In recent weeks, it has felt like Milan have gone for several different candidates and ended up with people who were not in the limelight. After all, Ruben Amorim and Markus Krösche are names that have only just emerged.

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It is only really since the weekend that they have been properly linked to the jobs. However, that is not to say that they were not targets beforehand.

Instead, the focus was so high on Oliver Glasner and Ralf Rangnick that they may have been overlooked. In other words, this is not the Rossoneri getting the best of what is left, nor is it a case of doing things on the cheap.

Yes, Amorim is arriving for nothing and Bobby Gardiner is an internal hire. However, they will have to spend €10 million, maybe a little less, to get their chosen technical director and Head of Football, a role which has been created for Krösche.

That is not doing things on the cheap.

Perhaps you can say it’s another risk, but each hire feels smart in its own way. Ultimately, you’ve got to remember, this is a decision found, made and agreed on by five different parties – Gerry Cardinale, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Massimo Calvelli and two headhunters.

We know that there have been disagreements between them, too, as seen with Rangnick. So, for this group to get approval says an awful lot about the belief in them to do well in the long-term.

Amorim’s appointment

Starting with Amorim, the Portuguese coach is understandably not getting a massively positive reception. After all, his time with Manchester United was not positive and his stock only got lower for several reasons.

Michael Carrick’s start to life in Manchester has probably had an effect on the thoughts about the Portuguese. However, that is not to say that he is directly responsible for everything. After all, it has been suggested that the former midfielder’s work has largely been on getting them to enjoy football again, with the occasional bit of tactical work.

We’ve got to remember that this is a coach who was in extremely high demand before leaving Portugal and he went to United when they were still transitioning. Expectations did not change, though. Ultimately, there was no real long-term plan.

Instead, it was a case of demanding the world and not really offering the foundations to ensure that the world could be captured.

A denial of fault won’t be given here. By the end of his tenure, he looked out of his depth and out of ideas; that isn’t great. However, it has to be questioned whether the club ever fully committed to him and his ideas.

It is all well and good to claim that he was naive enough not to make tactical changes. Yet, if the club didn’t back his own system, what could he do? He was very clearly a dead man walking by the end, so if he had of changed his system, would it have done anything? Realistically, no.

With Milan, it is believed that he will have ‘more power’ than a traditional head coach. So, it seems that he will work closely with the new sporting director and the Head of Football to ensure that the players who arrive fit the tactical plan for them all.

As well, and perhaps more importantly, the choice was endorsed by Krösche. He was given the option between Glasner and Amorim and he opted for the Portuguese. A decision made even more interesting considering he had worked with the Austrian previously.

That is already a statement of belief and a sign that the Germans want to work with the former Manchester United man.

Faith in the Frankfurt duo

Krösche’s name only really entered conversations recently, but it is not the first time that he has been linked. In fact, the German was first linked last summer, but with the management wanting to Italianise and him wanting to continue with the Eintracht Frankfurt project, the parties did not marry.

Now, though, it seems like they will with an agreement reached. So, the clubs will now discuss the ‘release’ terms for both him and Timmo Hardung, who, like Amorim, was Krösche’s choice.

Starting with Krösche, he is deemed to be a less intrusive version of Rangnick, but the German had advocated for him to join the Red Bull project, showing that he is well thought of by a more senior candidate.

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At present, he holds the role of the ‘Football CEO’ at Frankfurt, so his role will be almost exactly the same with the Diavolo. In other words, the transition period will be lessened and the same models and practices can be applied.

He is appreciated largely for his long-term project vision and this would be the hope with Milan, to create something tangible for the future. It will take time, of course, but the hiring as a Head of Football could also be significant.

There were suggestions that Zlatan Ibrahimovic could be headed for a more commercial role after the summer. So, having someone to oversee the complete footballing aspect of the club (and having the power to do that with the first team), with Ibrahimovic heading to focus on the commercial side, could be huge.

This is furthered by his decision to back Amorim, as mentioned, and also the fact that he is being allowed to bring his own technical director. That is instant trust from Cardinale and Ibrahimovic and it feels rare in that sense.

With Hardung, Milan know that they are appointing a duo who work well together, which is something rare in itself. However, both get to continue working with a partner whom they know inside out already, which can help when making huge decisions quickly, rather than having a mismatched team.

Perhaps the most important thing is that Antonio Vitiello highlighted that the club is increasingly focused on capital gains. Now, that is a bit of a scary sentence to read. However, this is where Hardung and Krösche can excel the Diavolo forward.

In Serie A, you compete by being the smartest, as Gerry Cardinale stated, it is about who can get the most value out of a Euro.

“It’s not about spending like a Middle Eastern government, which you will never do. It’s about spending an incremental euro of capital in a better, smarter, more innovative way.”

This is a partnership who have overseen profits of €140 million in the past three years, while remaining competitive. Now, the margins are unlikely to be so high with the Diavolo, but that is where things get exciting.

The duo are geniuses when it comes to buying and selling at the right time, their margins will not have to be so extreme – it should be closer to net zero, hopefully – and so this means they can have greater freedom in the mercato, whilst still remaining fantastic at getting the most value for the Euro.

It is all about buying smarter.

Gardiner’s knowledge

Very little can be said about Gardiner, largely because little is known about him. However, he was deemed to be one of the most exciting analysts in the game in 2023. Now, with almost a decade of experience in Italy under his belt, he looks like a fantastic hire for the Chief Scout.

He has an exceptional understanding of the talent that stands out in games, having spent years as a performance analyst with the Rossoneri. Though he has also been involved in recruitment.

It leads to now, where he will have the chance to combine the two: identifying profiles that work for the club and the league. What perhaps makes this so smart is the factor of him having so much experience seeing what works in Serie A.

This means he can feed that information (and the profiles to match) to those above him and a collaborative effort can be made to build a team for the future based on models for what actually works, not what might, as you may get from a foreign hire.

In many ways, it means you keep the extensive knowledge of Italian football – which was deemed necessary last summer – even if it is not an Italian national taking the role.

Furthermore, he can also provide areas where the Rossoneri squad needs improvement, having studied and analysed them throughout the past few seasons.

In other words, it is not a completely fresh start; there is knowledge of what is needed, having seen what has and hasn’t worked for years on end, he can now put it into motion himself.

A long-term plan

As something to round this off, this is a set of hires that seems to be built around the long-term future of the club. Over the past few years, it has seemed more and more like a churn-and-burn project at Casa Milan. This wasn’t sustainable in any way, financially or sportingly.

Now, this feels like a plan to build for the future. The foundations are there and it feels like a genuinely fresh, strong start. You have a defined head of the footballing project, a technical director who aligns with his views and a manager whom he has agreed on.

It almost feels like everything has clicked into place.

You’d imagine Krösche will have had a say in the decision to promote Gardiner, too, with the news all coming in the same time period.

This doesn’t feel like a mismatched group put together, as it has in recent years. Instead, there is a defined power ranking and each decision has been made with that in mind. Each part should, theoretically, bring their own strengths whilst working well with the others around them.

You can definitely be worried, Milan have given fans too many reasons to be naturally pessimistic in recent years. But this feels like it could be something good and for a fresh start, this feels about as good as it could be.

Maybe the jigsaw has finally fallen into place.