More news is filtering by the hour regarding the exit of Paolo Maldini and what happened in the days leading up to the decision.
According to Corriere della Sera (via PianetaMilan), Maldini and Gerry Cardinale had a brief meeting on Monday in which the two did not really enter into the merits of the issues that led over time to the separation.
Cardinale had already made the decision not to continue with Maldini as technical director because they had mentalities and ideas that were simply too different, so during the meeting he simply gave him notice that he was no longer needed.
However, the paper adds that the RedBird founder offered Maldini a different role. He pitched the idea that he would no longer be technical director in charge of transfers, but rather a consultant.
However, knowing Maldini’s story and his refusal to accept roles that weren’t prominent, it was presumable that he would have rejected the hypothesis immediately.
There was the search yesterday for a way to agree a mutual separation and to sign off a shared statement, but they did not succeed as it was evidently too strong a break.
Maldini’s responsibilities at Milan will be ‘assigned to an integrated working group that will work in close contact with the first team coach, reporting directly to the managing director’.
This working group, with coach Stefano Pioli at the centre, includes chief scout Geoffrey Moncada and ‘Moneyball’ man Billy Beane, plus CEO Giorgio Furlani. They will make and approve the choices.
It will now be a committee, a collective decision-making process that was in force before the last season before Maldini asked for and obtained autonomy.
Fans are confused as they saw Maldini as the guarantor of the project, but in order for it to be successful everyone must be pulling in the same direction and the two philosophies were too distant not to take different paths.
Maldini’s demand for full decision-making power is considered ‘old-fashioned’ by Cardinale who, on the contrary, demands ‘sharing’ of choices. The mistake might have been the renewal a year ago, but the change of ownership in progress discouraged the idea of a full overhaul back then.
However, a testing year reached boiling point when Maldini publicly called for the club to invest. Cardinale meanwhile does not think that whoever spends the most wins, but whoever does it better. These are irreconcilable ways of working, and it led to a split.
