Since Gerry Cardinale decided to sack Paolo Maldini and Ricky Massara at the start of the summer, there has been a lot of focus on the alleged ‘Moneyball’ approach. Now the AC Milan owner has clarified the term.
Giorgio Furlani and Geoffrey Moncada took over the work of the sacked duo, signing a total of 10 players and parting ways with 14. In short, it was quite the turnover but Milan have performed on the pitch so far (3/3 wins).
Speaking in his long interview with CorSera’s Sette, which you can read in full here, Cardinale was asked about the Moneyball approach on the mercato. He made it clear that it’s very nuanced and not just about one guy with data.
“It is crucial to understand that data is just one of the tools in our ‘toolbox’. From what I read it seems that if you are a data expert then it means you don’t do scouting well. It’s ridiculous.
“Moneyball was written 20 years ago, today everyone uses data but in our portfolio there is an analysis company with 13 researchers from MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology]. European football is not baseball, it requires a different level of sophistication and we believe we are at the forefront,” he told the newspaper.
Milan will face Inter in the Derby della Madonnina tomorrow and it will be the first derby with both sides joint-first in the standings since 1962. In other words, it will be a very special one and Cardinale will be present at the stadium.
There was no moneyball used this year, its just à hype.
Pulisic, chukweze,rlc,luka jovic cannot be idéal recruits if we have used Moneyball
It was just à trap to show it,in case if anyone is unsuccessful in jobs, it can be team manager or owner.
Even Cardinale said Moneyball is a thing of 20 years ago (outdated) and not designed for football. The Italian media overhyped it without knowing what was really used by Moncada and his team.
Jovic wasn’t a money ball recruit. He was the third choice
European football requires European approach. Hope this is understandable.
Most people, especially the Italian media and football dinosaurs like that fool Walter Sabatini, don’t even understand moneyball. Just because they don’t understand something that is new, by default they demonized it. That 🤡 Sabatini, Massara’s mentor, had a temper tantrum this summer, criticizing Milan firing his pupil alongside Leonardo’s pupil, based on the “Moneyball” movie. That’s how ignorant some people are and were this summer.
@abdul, the club had a style of football and they identified targets with the approval of the people running the team. The identification process isn’t spelled out but it can be deduced.
The players brought in this summer was not possible without a good foundation. That means a performing system on the pitch. The analysis done would have taken the transfer parameters and that helps identify these opportunities as the best ones.
This isn’t new, but it also means that Milan has a method which is working. Anyone who is watching the performances still have to be realistic, it is only 3 games so far. I would give it the first 10 games and then again evaluate the recent transfer market after December and again after 70 percent of the season is done.
Precisely this @ajosh
100% facts
The methodology isnt new per se but it seems to have caught those out who don’t know what it means. Also.as you said it’s only been 3 games and it seems people thi k we’ve won something. I always give it a third of the season to see where things are likely to go. Still very early days. Promising signs but still early
Yes he is right , AC Milan are not team baseball thats why need more different approach combine with moneyball data analyze like moncada team scouting . They want to avoid error like last season mercato ( CDK + origi failure) , they dont want dry loan player anymore like brahim ( growing him 3 years without getting some transfer fee in return )
i feel like now its just a catch all term for signing 5 young players for 20m players instead of 1 player for 100m which they can’t afford to do anyway so it sounds nice and its low risk because young payers are for more likely to gain value than lose value even if you don’t play them much. And has very high upside if one of them becomes one of those 100m. Trust the process.
I really hate these puff pieces.
The reality is that this Milan team was built by Maldini and Massara:
Maignan-Theo-Tomori-Thiaw-Kalulu-Leao-Tonali is the foundation. Tolani was sold to fund transfers with a net impact of 2 players. Bennacer hasn’t played yet. Giroud is still the striker because Moneyball signed a striker the coach considers to be a winger.
Maldini wasn’t allowed to finish the build. All of the players signed by ‘Moneyball’ were players we were previously liked to (and likely would have signed if the purse strings weren’t loosened until last season’s Mercato was mostly over).
It’s a real lack of class to take credit for the work of others.
In your net 2 players, which one of Pulisic, RLC, and Reijnders are you leaving out? Those three players have a) provided balance we lacked for years and b) turned us into a more direct threat.
3 new key starters and far better depth is a pretty good summer if you ask me.
We will never know whether M&M would have signed those three anyway because they have left the club.
Something else we will never know is the full reason why, but it’s fair to assume they didn’t share Cardinale’s vision going forward.
Aaand one last thing we will never know is who’s vision was better. But I support Milan the football club, so if the results on the pitch are good, the football is enjoyable, and we are healthy and growing and maybe even closing the gap to the English teams off the pitch, then I’m happy enough to stop whinging about a made up word.
“We will never know whether M&M would have signed those three anyway because they have left the club.” I think he was saying that it’s the same players we were linked with/going to sign anyways.
“..but it’s fair to assume they didn’t share Cardinale’s vision going forward.” While I agree this might be true, I find it odd and funny that the vision means signing almost exactly the same players Maldini and Massara wanted. RLC, Puli, Okafor, Chuk etc all were Maldini targets
Nope . M&M target SMS as AMF , berardi as RW , arnautovic as striker ,RLC as double pivot. The reason he is get sacked because he asking budget increase to sign all that target without selling tonali. Imagine just SMS already 40m euro ,it is over their budget 35m euro
Those were also targets yes. But what we landed on were also targets. Puli, RLC, Chuck, Okafor ALL were linked with us prior. And those were the main ones we got. Apparently according to Yelnats Reinjders was linked too. Maybe, just maybe the difference lies in him not wanting to sell an asset so I could see that being the case. But otherwise, it would have been the same signings except a couple plus keeping Tonali. Maybe we would have lost either Mike or Tomori to make up the balance.
Cardinale’s vision?
He was telling us who to sign 13 months ago but wasn’t releasing the funds to do it?
Don’t get sucked in by the spin. He sacked Maldini because of a clash of egos.
@Bruno, was that for me? Oh I completely agree with you and I don’t buy none of the crap they say about Maldini. I also get the feeling Cardinale likes to be at the centre of attention too and Maldini was unintentionally getting all the spotlight being the symbol he was. It’s why I said, if the visions between the two were so different, why did they basically sign the same players Maldini wanted too.
It doesn’t matter, does it?
The net impact of his sale is still that we had to replace one of our best players.
I’ve said countless times when those Moneyball articles came out it became a bit of a misnomer or misinformation. Money Ball is for a specific incident, time and sport. The value proposition relied on other teams NOT performing data analysis to the extent that they were doing. So their margin for success were relatively higher than other clubs in comparison. They had a competitive advantage in that sense. Plus the “success” of Money Ball relative to the Oakland As lies in the fact that Oakland’s history meant they were never really talked about in terms of winning the World Series, so them making even a slight run in the playoffs was deemed a huge success. And they never won anything major with the Money Ball approach, just that they exceeded expectations. That being said, the further success with the so-called money Ball resides with the Red Sox who did use Beane’s models in their succes in the WS but by then other people had developed models and the Red Sox had the ability to buy much better quality players than Oakland as Henry had acquired them at that point. So was it actually Money Ball or Henry’s money? Besides the Red Sox already had Big Papi in their lineup (sound familiar?), it was more tweaking the team to find the right team players.
Even Beane admits at the time that they cannot measure intangibles like clutch performing and grit (although these days you can proxy them). There were models at the time which predicted the Sox were going to win, including yours truly, even if they hadn’t won in like 80+ years which was an incredibly ballsy thing to do at the time.
The other thing to note is that when the As traded Giambi for the 3 or 4 players (sounds familiar?), Giambi still went on to have very good seasons with the Yankees and had some of his best career stats came there, while the players the As got only created short term “succes” there
Nowadays most clubs use data analytics to drive decision making and is being confused with what people refer to as Money Ball. Everyone pretty much does Money Ball in the sense that they optimize their decisions to generate the maximum benefit (profit, sales, revenues, exposure). What really is not apparent is who has a distinct advantage over another.
Anyways….
Agree with this.