CorSport: Maldini had a revolution in mind that involved Pirlo becoming head coach

By Oliver Fisher -

There continues to be more information filtering regarding what led to the breakdown in relations between Gerry Cardinale and Paolo Maldini.

According to what is being reported by Corriere dello Sport (via MilanNews) this morning, Maldini had a revolution in mind before he was sacked by Cardinale on Monday, specifically relating to the coaching department.

In addition to an improvement in the squad, the technical director had made it clear that he was not particularly satisfied with the work done by Stefano Pioli, and he was lining up a potential change.

The paper even stated that Maldini wanted to replace Pioli with his former team-mates Andrea Pirlo. Having been manager of Fatih Karagümrük in Turkey most recently, the former midfielder is currently without a club.

However, the information we have through our colleagues at SempreMilan.it is that this news seems to be wide of the mark.

In August 2019, Pirlo enrolled in the UEFA Pro Licence courses at Coverciano and then got a job with Juventus U23 before being appointed head coach of the first team. However, he was sacked after just one season with Inter beating them to the title.

Tags AC Milan Andrea Pirlo

23 Comments

  1. Again stop publishing lies for hits, Maldini loved Pioli and was fully aware that the failure of this season was not down to the coach but to the owners, who left everything too late

  2. Pioli vs Pirlo ??
    It sounds like Maldini wanted to transfer his responsibility of bad transfer market to coach decision.

    Just remember how bad Origi was this season. How Vranckx is not adequate yet. How Dest was disaster. How Charles De Ketelaere is still afraid and lost when he enters the pitch…
    No one can’t blame Pioli easily when he managed to reach some success and integrate a lot of young players.

    Still Pioli had luck due juventus malversations, but much better coach than Pirlo will ever be.

  3. I have to call bs on this, sorry. Totally damage control by cardinale. Bashing maldini’s reputation as a director at any level. Trying to justify his blunder. 2 days of total silence then all of the sudden all this news comes out how bad maldini was. Give me a break. What a joke of an owner. #redbirdout

    1. And if you see this, this in no way criticising your work on a whole but as a user on your website it is best to give feedback and I just wanted to tell you the truth which is avoid headlines/news you yourself know is fake

  4. You guys certainly like to criticize the page a lot. If it is so fake use One Football. Oh wait Sempre Milan is the main source for all milan news why can anyone just accept that Maldini just wasn’t good for the job as signings show

  5. People have got to take the blinders off. Maldini was an amazing player but a mediocre technical director. This is a fact. Just like we would not to continue running Zlatan on to the pitch when his best days are quite clearly behind him, we shouldn’t keep betting on Maldini recapturing the glory days. Club > everything.

    1. I think the blinders are superglued to their heads at this point because they can read people’s minds and have special insider knowledge of what goes on behind closed doors at Milanelo.

    2. Again.

      We were recovering the “glory days”.

      We’d literally won the title, qualified for the champions league three years in a row and made it the semis.

      What alternative “glory days” do you have mind?

      1. This past season was nearly disastrous, due in no small part to Maldinis decision to sign CDK rather than Dybala. Outside of Thiaw this past window was an utter flop, and if not for Juventus scandal, we would be playing Europa League football. Maldini had his own idea that ran counter to ownership, a very reasonable thing to get sacked over. We all love Pirlo as well but no one is clamoring for him to be coach. Why? He’s not as good a coach as he was a player. Same applies to Maldini. He convinced some good players to come due to the weight of his name but the first window he was granted total autonomy was absolutely awful. Let’s move on.

        1. The great thing about the imaginary world that fans and the media inhabit is that they don’t need to deal with reality.

          So in your imaginary world Dybala who literally just finished 6th with Roma was the missing piece in the jigsaw….

          And we can just ignore the past 3 YEARS which included a sustained period of title winning form which lasted over 2 YEARS from the end of Covid in June 2022 to January this year.

          None of that happened in the alternative universe in your head.

          1. Dybala had 18 goals and 7 assists in all comps this year. CDK had one assist. Yea I think we would have done better with Dybala LOL

          2. But Roma ended up with 9 less goals in serie A. What is the use of good invididual stats if the team stats become worse?

          3. Milan this year end up with 16 less points than last season but people wanna make a case that it was the right decision to not sign Dybala because Roma scored 9 less goals with him in their line up.
            CDK and Orogi were the right choices. 2 goals between the both of them

          4. Who CdK and Origi replace anyway? D. Maldini and Lazetic! Lol… are you suggesting we lost 16 points by replacing D. Maldini and Lazetic with CdK and Origi?

            Roma regress by changing from Mkhitaryan to Dybala and the reason Milan regress is because of not replacing Kessie properly. Pobega is the one supposed to replace him but he is not on Kessie level yet.

        2. Dybala was injured most of the time at his last season with Juventus. How would you justify if Milan went for Dybala with 10 mill+ gross salary and he was injured most of the time? [Don’t say Dybala’s salary is 3/4 mill, he has bonus tied up which take it over 10 mill]

  6. It is fake news. Pirlo failed in turkish club , i already see many of his formation on juve . He have no fixed formation and still have few experience in coaching

  7. No people have the so called banter era in minds. Need I remind you it took 10 years before we got out of it and it was no other than the project of Maldini that got us out, with limited funds. Every sporting director makes mistakes, nobody is saying every transfer was perfect.
    But I can’t think of any other club who have managed to 3x the value of the squad with limited funds at the same time and clearing up the salary structure and deleting all dept, its absolutely astonishing we are in the position we have been in the last 3 years.

  8. It’s more like Maldini doesn’t see Pioli is untouchable. That’s all. Well, only time will tell how this pans out.

  9. I suspect this was really about the future.

    On any measure, Pioli has done a good job and should coach next season. However, there are pretty clear signs that his overall usefulness is expiring.

    I think we could conceivably have gotten to the end of the 2023/2024 and short of a Scudetto or UCL title we would call it quits and look to bring in someone new.

    Whether Pirlo is the right guy, I’m not sure. My heart screams ‘yes’, but my head says only ‘maybe’. I understand all of the Juve metrics for his year there were basically number 1, other than finishing which is the only reason he didn’t win the league. It wasn’t Allegri taking over Conte, it was a revamped way of playing, too.

    Whether the statistical success is because Pirlo was a great coach or because Juve’s squad was that far advanced, I am unable to say.

    One of The Athletic channels has a 10 minute clip on Pirlo as a coach from a few years ago. He is clearly all over modern philosophy.

    Maldini and Pirlo would have been the dream team.

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