Another interview with AC Milan owner Gerry Cardinale has been published, with a lot of the same themes of disappointment emerging.
La Gazzetta dello Sport have spoken to Cardinale after Corriere della Sera did too, and they write that he seemed ‘angry’. About the results, of course, but even more so with those who question his desire and his urgency to win.
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He also appeared to be disappointed, because after a good season the team are at risk of throwing away the minimum aim. The analysis of what worked and what didn’t has already (obviously) begun, but the Rossoneri have two games to take care of their own destiny.
Cardinale doesn’t speak often, so if he does now, it’s because it’s a sensitive time. He believes it’s useful to bring order to the noise that surrounds Milan, where many different reports are trying to add to the confusion.
The summer will bring changes, that’s for sure. Without wanting to draw definitive conclusions, it doesn’t seem like a minor detail that the name ‘Max’ appears three times in half an hour of conversation.
Why did you decide to speak?
“As you know, I don’t usually give interviews. I think words are worthless: facts should speak for themselves. But I understand that, at a time like this, it’s right to send a clear message.”
What’s happening to your Milan in free fall?
“Max and the team have done a great job for almost the entire season. We were top of the table, in contention for the Scudetto until the match against Lazio. And then in the last five games, we risked throwing the season away.
“I’ve been in sport for three decades. I know these things happen, but that doesn’t make you feel any better. Now we’re focused on winning the last two games. But, I have to say, we’re operating in a difficult context: so much controversy and so many lies. Frankly, I’m a little disappointed.”
Is there anything you want to deny right away?
“For example, that I’m only interested in money and not in winning. It’s absurd. If you look at my life and my career, I’ve always won. So, this idea that I would do something without the goal of being number one and winning consistently is ridiculous.
“But results should speak for themselves, and when performances don’t reach their potential like they are now, I’m definitely on edge. I don’t coach, I don’t score goals, I don’t defend, but I can do my part.
“My part is to provide the financial resources so we can continue to field a winning team, not just in Serie A, but, hopefully, in Europe as well. That’s my job, and I’m pretty good at it.
Let’s go back to the disappointing results…
“I’m not happy, obviously. Max isn’t happy, the players aren’t happy. Winning remains the priority, and I can assure you that everyone wants to win. Not winning the Scudetto is a disappointment. If we don’t finish in the top four, it’s a failure.
“We’ve had a lot of injuries; now, for example, Luka (Modric, ed.) is out: that’s the way it is. You can’t always win, even if Milan should, but when they don’t, it’s a failure. But let me add one thing.
“I come from a culture where, when someone stumbles, we help them get back up, not try to erase them. Now the team is stumbling, so I’d like to tell everyone who cares about the team to support them and not demoralise them. We have two games to win, let’s stay focused.”
But the fans are protesting against the team and the management. How do you feel about it?
“I don’t blame the fans for being angry – I’m angry too. They’re as passionate as I am. But let’s try to support our players instead of tearing them down. I feel a huge sense of responsibility. When we fall short and I see the fans’ reaction, I take it very personally, I’m shocked.
“It gets under my skin, and I feel a huge obligation to fix things with an urgency that no one should question. I wake up every morning with the desire to win and a deep sense of disappointment and frustration when we don’t.”
Ambition is crucial. Many fans fear that financial sustainability or Champions League qualification will become end points, rather than a means to compete at higher levels…
“I’m surprised this needs explaining. Since I’ve owned AC Milan, we’ve achieved financial results that exceeded expectations; we’ve recorded positive cash flow for the first time in our history. Why is this important? Because I’m not taking that money and putting it in my pocket, I’m reinvesting it.
“But the narrative that financial discipline means not wanting to win makes no sense. Over the last three seasons, we’ve spent more than any other Serie A team on the market. Now, maybe we haven’t spent it wisely. I give myself a higher grade for the money I’ve invested than for how we’ve spent it.
“We need to do a better job of establishing a direct correlation between spending and winning. We haven’t managed that yet. We haven’t done a good job, and we’ll fix that.
“We need to examine the structure and the football side of things and collaborate with the coaching staff and the sporting director to understand how we can work better together.”
So what will happen in the summer? Do you think many changes will be necessary at Milan, at all levels? In the management and the technical department…
“We’re always trying to evolve our organisation. So yes, everyone should expect that every season, but especially those where performances fall short of expectations, everything is reevaluated, and I will reevaluate everyone and everything this summer.
“I’ll dedicate my entire summer to this, you should assume I’m already thinking about it, otherwise I wouldn’t be doing my job. Let’s see how we end up, then I’ll sit down…
“I’ve already sat down with Max, and we’ve talked about a lot of things. We’ll get to work once the season is over, now is not the time to talk about it.”
Can you at least tell us which direction things might go?
“The goal is to improve the organisation and bring it to a world-class level. The goal here is to win as much as possible every year, but also to ensure that, while we do so, we’re laying the foundation for consistent success.
“We could spend a fortune, signing established players and aiming for immediate success. But what happens next? We need to do both. This summer, we’ll examine the organisation and see what we can do to fill the gaps, because we haven’t been up to par.
“It’s not just about replacing people, but about examining the organisational structure and making sure we have everything in place, from the coaching staff to the player selection team, to the sporting director, to the academies: it’s a holistic ecosystem that needs to be improved.
“When I took over the team, it wasn’t there. Sport, like many industries, is about people. You need to have the best people, you need to attract the best people in all areas. We’re not there yet.”
What have you learned in these four years? Have you made any mistakes?
“Yes, of course I’ve made mistakes. Many. This is probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done. But I’m a fighter and I won’t stop until I win. One of the biggest lessons was understanding how different the context is.
“If you don’t live it, as an American, you don’t understand the role that soccer and Milan have in the community. But I wish we’d focused more on the crucial issues: the importance of sports infrastructure; how to modernise Italian soccer; why Italy missed another World Cup, the third in a row.
“Instead, there’s controversy. You see, it’s not just about Serie A. It’s about missing the Champions League finals and losing 5-0; it’s about playing competitively in Europe. It’s about the 4-1 gap in TV rights between the Premier League and all the others.
“The gap in Italian soccer has widened. But, the way the world is going today, you can’t solve it without money. And I have experience with money, but I’ve also spent 30 years in sports. I don’t want to directly transfer how we do things in America.
“I’m I’m fully aware that things are different in Italy and that I have to adapt to this, and I need to surround myself with great Italians who can help me with this; it’s part of the learning process.”
The stadium plays a key role in your growth strategy: after delays and bureaucracy, are you still optimistic?
“Here too, it’s important to understand why we’re doing this. It’s not a real estate deal, it’s not an ego project. It’s about improving AC Milan’s financial profile so we can compete for the best players in the world.
“It’s also, among other things, something we should do for the people of Milan. Milan deserves to have a world-class stadium, to be recognized globally as the home of sport, and to celebrate its culture. That’s not the case right now.”
Finally, can you tell us something about the NBA Europe project?
“The NBA is probably the only truly international sport that comes from the United States. And as it turns out, the days of the Dream Team with Michael Jordan, Magic, and Larry Bird are over. You saw it at the Olympics, you saw it in the fact that many of the recent NBA MVPs came from Europe.
“So Europe has really become a powerhouse when it comes to basketball, and there’s a huge opportunity for collaboration between America and Europe, which is music to my ears. But even here, I think about it in terms of: ‘How does this help AC Milan?’
“The Euroleague has existed for 26 years, most of the teams are unprofitable. It’s not sustainable. So I think it’s the European soccer clubs that need to collaborate with the NBA and bring NBA basketball to Europe. And that’s what I’ll try to do in Milan
“The goal is to continue to elevate the AC Milan brand, offer opportunities to the fans, continue to improve our financial profile. So it’s all part of an ecosystem where everyone should benefit. from each other.”
1986-1991, 1991-1996, 1996-2001, 2001-2006/07, 2007-2012, 2012-2017, 2017-2022, 2022-2026/27?
Kvalificerat nonsens av MR Anale. SÄLJ KLUBBEN NU
“My part is to provide the financial resources so we can continue to field a winning team, not just in Serie A, but, hopefully, in Europe as well. That’s my job, and I’m pretty good at it.”
– You suck at it. Making drastic changes every summer in both team and management is why we’re in the gutter.
“I come from a culture where, when someone stumbles, we help them get back up, not try to erase them.”
– Sure, that’s why you changed 4 coaches in 3 seasons and wasted more than 400 milions on transfers. You’re so called managers have no problems deserting the team in need of help or even perform mobbing when they don’t perform (Ibra to Morata, Calabria, Tomori)
“Since I’ve owned AC Milan, we’ve achieved financial results that exceeded expectations; we’ve recorded positive cash flow for the first time in our history.”
– Selling core players every summer brings you positive cash flow and balance sheet.
“We need to do a better job of establishing a direct correlation between spending and winning. We haven’t managed that yet. We haven’t done a good job, and we’ll fix that.
“We need to examine the structure and the football side of things and collaborate with the coaching staff and the sporting director to understand how we can work better together”
– Hmm, here’s a wild idea. Maybe you should actually work on building a team on a longterm instead of selling for profit and capital gains our core players every summer.
“We’re always trying to evolve our organisation. So yes, everyone should expect that every season, but especially those where performances fall short of expectations, everything is reevaluated, and I will reevaluate everyone and everything this summer.”
– What suddenly happened to “I come from a culture where, when someone stumbles, we help them get back up, not try to erase them”?
“When I took over the team, it wasn’t there. Sport, like many industries, is about people. You need to have the best people, you need to attract the best people in all areas. We’re not there yet.”
– You’ve had everything you insufferable egomaniac, all you needed to do was build on already established foundations. Instead you blew it all for the sake of your pride and ego and now you come here with these a*s excuses contradicting yourself in every answer.
That arrogance and stupidity are unreal. He needs media training urgently. Very reminiscent of another massive arrogant idiot with a red hat, another “winner”, a fellow countryman of him.
*of his
I don’t know how much of that turbulence is on Gerry VS Furlani?
He says all the right things, but without action nothing matters. If he truly is dissatisfied with how the money has been spent, then the fault lies with Furlani & Moncada. So if he then goes on to fire Tage & Allegri, while giving Furlani more power, we know he is full of shit 👌
Gerry’s biggest faults are thinking Ibra is an adequate replacement of Maldini and the incompetent network of people put in place under him. So that when he comes out with interviews like this this his answers don’t completely contradict what his management team has been doing the past 4 years …
So far this is just all lip service and should be taken as that, unless there are actual competent changes in management.
There’s nothing new here, but it was for the benefit of those who can’t see the wood for the trees and like pushing their toxic agendas.
The one thing I (minimally) hope that he said truthfully, is that he acknowledges that he made many mistakes. Now, we’ll see if it is just lipservice and the mistakes will continue, or he will indeed take corrective action.
Talk is cheap. Actions are infinitely more important. There is no trust whatsoever that Cardinale will suddenly start doing the right things. There can be SOME tiny hope, if he does understand that he made many mistakes. However, when he says “I’m pretty good at it” when he obviously is not, that tiny hope becomes microscopic, given that someone who says that even in face of colossal failure, is not truly owning the responsibility for the failure; it’s just self-service, trying to recover his stance with the fans (well, good luck with that; we aren’t being fooled by the lipservice).
An interview that would made me truly hopeful would go, instead, like this: “Oh boy, was I wrong! I was arrogant and thought I’d bring my American solutions to Italian soccer, and now I realize that I just didn’t (and still don’t) have a clue. I surrounded myself with incompetent and equally arrogant people, and fired the one guy who was a club legend and a true lover of the club and knew what this club means for the city of Milano, for Italy and Europe. It was my mistaken ego trip, and I blamed Paolo Maldini for a couple of minor errors, and then replaced him with people who made three dozen much bigger errors. And then, despite those huge errors, I didn’t fire them. That was pretty stupid.
I am coming here to say to the fans, I’m sorry. Now I will indeed fire all the incompetent ego maniacs – I should fire myself since I’m the biggest ego maniac and let’s be truthful, I’m the biggest fool here – but I will try once again, from scratch. Out with Furlani, Scaroni, Tari, Ibrahimovic and all the circus full of clowns (I only hesitate in blaming Allegri because the clowns above-mentioned never gave him a true opportunity and didn’t even listen to him regarding what players to sign; but I guess he also realizes that his time here is over especially if we don’t get top 4, and he will go to greener pastures like the national team, and that will be it, so we’ll need another coach too, anyway).
This time I will try to actually hire people who understand Italian and European soccer, truly love the club, are not arrogant ego maniacs, and I will direct the new sporting director and head of scouting to listen to the head coach regarding how to sign players who will make sense for the coach’s system and will become a team rather than a disjointed mess.
If despite having finally waken up from my ego trip, I fail again, then I will sell the club and go back to America with my tail between my legs, and hope that the next owner who takes over me does a much better job; which won’t be hard because I really screwed up royally.”
Given that the interview in this article falls WAY short of my mock one above, again, I’m only microscopically hopeful. Let’s say, I’m 1% hopefull because at least he said he made many mistakes, but still 99% pessimistic, thinking that the mistakes will continue to happen, that nothing substantial will change, and we will consequently re-enter the banter years.
God save AC Milan, because Gerry Cardinale is unlikely to save us, as he is actually the problem.
Of course he knows he made mistakes, why do you think they keep changing the coach, squad and SD every season!?!?!? This group lack experience, they’re not football people, they understand American sports, they understand building a brand and stadium, which is why it’s been easier for them to resolve the stadium issue then the issues with the squad. Building a stadium doesn’t require football knowledge.
And how many times do u need to defend them???They’re paid millions to do a job that they couldn’t.
If u suck at ur job, you’re fired. As simple as that
Talk is cheap.
His biggest mistake, by far, was the sacking of Maldini, as the club, the management and Cardinale lost so much insight into the club, the organisational culture and credibility.
1) Re-sign Maldini (if possible) first thing first as Sport Director.
2) Tare is fine but not stellar, if possible replace him with D’Amico
3) A new and more attack-minded coach, but it is Maldinis decision.
4) Strength the team in accordance with the wishes of the coach