AC Milan CEO Giorgio Furlani attempted to provide a level-headed response after the defeat against Inter in the derby which handed them their 20th league title.
Milan went into the game against their city rivals knowing that they simply needed to avoid defeat in order to postponed the title celebrations until the next game at least, and yet they failed to do even that.
Inter found themselves 2-0 up in the first half after goals from Francesco Acerbi and Marcus Thuram, which rendered Fikayo Tomori’s late goal a mere consolation as the Nerazzurri mathematically secured the Scudetto.
Furlani spoke to DAZN after the game and he attempted to reassure Milan fans about the path that the club are on, with his comments relayed by MilanNews.
It’s a complicated evening for AC Milan. What are the first thoughts?
“First of all we congratulate Inter, we would have liked to have been us. We are working hard for next season to make it a successful season. I wouldn’t talk about emotions now, we still have five games of this season left. We are still second and we would like to keep this second place, we are still focused on these next matches.”
At the beginning of the season were you convinced that you had a team worthy of rivalling Inter?
“We build the team to win, this was the objective last summer and it is also this summer. You can’t always win. We had a big revolution in the squad last summer, this year it will be a lighter job. The goal is always that.”
What improvements should AC Milan fans expect?
“Do you mean that we only invest in young people? I always say that with a player it is not that he is young or not so young, but more if the player is good or not so good. We will try to make an increasingly competitive team.”
And Pioli’s future?
“The Milan coach is Stefano Pioli, I confirm this. We are focused on finishing the season well. The way we work on the sporting side, the people who report to Gerry Cardinale are Moncada, Ibrahimovic and me. These are the people who report to Gerry, with him always making the final decision.”
His face is saying “I am getting paid, I don’t give a zero fak about results” The fack that he is still smiling to Camera and congratulating Inter first??? Man
Old picture… not from the interview
The dumb smirk is on every picture of his.
Yeh, you’d think it’d be obvious wouldn’t you.
Well… He’s been a Milanista all his life though so I doubt he “doesn’t give a zero fak about the results”.
And congratulating the winner is what normal, polite people do. Not doing so would make him an arrogant, jealous a**hole.
agree
Anyone can be milanista, but in various degrees. Actions speak louder than words. Being a milanista but without the knowledge required to govern the club has no impact. They were the ones who wanted a revolution! They preferred that to an evolution. They paid the price.
Yep. Let’s hope they will do better job this summer.
they did a decent job, much better than Maldini for sure, their only mistake was keeping Pioli
“Actions speak louder than words.” Maldini was a “milanista” and brought in Dest, Vranx, Thiaw, Origi, CDK and chased Renato Sanches for 3 months before missing out on him. That really helped us didn’t it?
He also brought in Tonali, Bennacer, Tomori, Theo, Giroud not to mention Ibra, who many in the managment were against it but now he’s a big part of it.
@Ted – yup he did well at the beginning obviously. Then he lost the plot. The mercato before last was probably the worst in Milan’s history.
Are those the only things Maldini brought to the club. Woes??
I thought he had a hand in bringing a scudetto with limited budget, but alas selective memory.
Clearly he’s such a huge milanista with how much respect he showed Maldini. Talk is cheap bb. It’s sad when ppl actually believe everything that comes from this weasel’s mouth
Never said I believe everything that comes out. I just said he has said he’s been a Milanista since childhood and believe him. Haven’t said anything about believing anything else he has said. Or have I? Just show me if I have and I stand corrected.
It’s one thing not liking the owners but every time someone does a fart you don’t like the smell of it’s “the clown managements” fault. It’s boring.
So practically our only hope is that this guy Gerry will sell or not pain the loan. Else, we are doomed with a guy who has seen 10 matches in his life making all the final decisions and a sporting area which has no character. Probably they will take the goal statistics of Pulisic and RLC to show of their great work, but in fact Salemakers was much more useful to this team.
Cardinale is all about the Benjamins. He said himself in a podcast, he invested in football here because of “buy low, sell high” opportunity. And guess who persuaded him to do so… Mr. Moneyball himself, Billy “the magic fuc*ing” Bean.
And that’s what we’re all about now, algorithms, buying cheap and statistically comparable players to our prized ones which will be sold for high profit while trying to maintain our top 4 spot.
The business is boomin!
It’s almost as if top football clubs are global brands and every owner of one expects a return on their investment.
At the detriment of the clubs sporting returns. Or is Milan expected to give up its history and sporting goals, because financial returns are expected??
Sure, but there are many different ways to achieve ROI aren’t there?
They opted for the dismantle of ongoing project and want to rewrite with their own story/project although accounts were green already and all that was needed was a puzzle here and there.
But now with early CL exit, which I blame this unecessary summer overhaul and spending spree, there won’t be as much money as they thought now.
f*ck you too!
I understand that some people here wanted to wait the end of the season to judge the last summer and our new management. Here we are. The biggest humiliation in the history of the club. Losing at home against our fiercest rival and watch them crowned and getting their second star while we don’t have anything to be proud of. But tomorrow we’ll have « Jerry smiles » because we sign a collab with Disneyland or Kool Aid. Get ready for another cheap, sorry sustainable summer where we sign some unknown coach, top players sign with rivals, Camarda leaves, etc. Vergogna
💯💯💯💯💯
The biggest humiliation in the history of the club is Pioli’s fault. 100% Pioli’s fault. He has a squad that should not be 16 points off the pace with 5 games to go.
Our board – whatever you think of them, are infinitely better than Inters, so your logic is really just angry bluster.
Who should they sell to? Who, in your opinion, will bring back the glory days without the need to focus on increasing revenue? Please offer a better and more importantly, realistic alternative.
Infinitely better than inters, yet inter board creates a team and works and wins and brings in returns.
Am sorry did we enter a twilight zone where Milan board became better than the best performing board in Serie A??
I think you should revisit your own realistic words.
Fired that clown….
Maldini was right to end up pioli last season!!!!
Maldini wanted Pirlo to replace Pioli. If that happened we would have been relegated. Both Maldini and Pioli should have been replaced last season. Smh
Nice crystal ball you have there predicting something to justify what’s happening now.
Pirlo and Maldini admitted to meeting and discussing it. Like ZionTrain says we’d be on our way to Serie B.
That’s not true. All they said was they met up and chatted as friends, nothing about coaching Milan. Nice try though
Are you really sure that he would hire Pirlo? Or this is someting that came out at Furlani request? In any case it’s insane that today we don’t have a consolidated candidate as new coach. Pioli should have been sacked and replaced last year.
MONEYBALL MONCADA!
Took us from this midfield:
Tonali, Kessie, Bennacer, Krunic
to this:
Bennacer, Reijnders, Adli, Musah
Reijnders would be AT LEAST the 5th midfielder in our winning Serie A season. Possibly lower.
MONEYBALL MONCADA – building a portfolio of players to profit from instead of building a team.
MONEYBALL MONCADA!
That’s not on Moncada he scouts players woth specific skillsets. Billy Beane who had been working within the parameters established by Elliot, Gazidis and Furliani, the last 2 summers with Cardinale who have their hands all over that.
They decided to make overtly conservative financial budgets where they set way too much of a hardline stance on player retention policies with wage caps that were not in line with realistic figures in today’s market. They managed the club with a banker and corporate view over a sporting one.
They didn’t want to re-sign players then sell them after. They took the most precautious measures. That positive balance we had came after 2 years of insufficient retention and reinforcements. This was always going to be the end result.
Agree with you. They only mention about profit and profit over sporting decision. And the wage budget not or never in line with todays mercato.. only on his dreams today if you only spend little for win big. Haha
When you can’t spend big, your players are asking more than your wage cap but less than market value, you shut up and bite the bullet, sign them. Then sell later if push comes to shove. Never let your best players walk for nothing.
Mirhajol as much as I want to agree with you, moncada is not to blame here. He only scouts as directed by Milan management cheap, sorry sustainable limited policy.
If he ever scouted an expensive experienced talent, who would pay for it.
Alas the man is onluly doing what he is under orders or duress or limited capacity to do. Not his fault in this case.
That gap is Marcus Thuram that you are refuse to paid 500k extra last season.
Thuram and hakan.. gap nya 500k doank. Milan dont want to pay anymore.. these is the one of the most important inter players this season. The cheese burger wont smile. Itu sebab nya Maldini out. Sedih…
Funny how people still defend the management for how Maldini was handled, while in fact we do not have any point of reference in current team stucture. Our current hopes are a change of owners, or maybe finding a couch who will handle every sporting aspect.
You already said that… 😴
I was one of the first ones to call them out on that. Still hate the fact that maldini is not there anymore and what he brought to the club and what he represented. But it is what it is. We still have to support our team in good days and bad days. I feel your pain though and hoping the future will be better.
When you can’t spend big, your players are asking more than your wage cap but less than market value, you shut up and bite the bullet, sign them. Then sell later if push comes to shove. Never let your best players walk for nothing.
This guy is trash. That phony grin says it all. HE and GERRY are to blame for our terrible season. We went from a UCL semi final team to this LOL.
Garbage. Poorly constructed team. Could have purchased many players for free like Lukaku or Thuram but we of course went the cheap route once again with a player like Jovic. Could have signed a CB and RB (miranda) in Janaury but again we went the cheap route and brought Gabbia back.
Well as they say in life you get what you pay for.
Pioli will be the easy scapegoat for the teams failure – and he definitely deserves some of the blame – BUT the true fault lies with Gerry and Furlani. The majority of our transfers were failures.
Sad day boys, sad day.
Pioli got a pass from me because he had a new team at the beginning of the year. After we got everyone back, he still made questionable selections. The only defense I had for hin is we were always second in chances created in Serie A over last few seasons. If we don’t sign goal scorers, you can’t expect Giroud to carry the offense alone. They coasted along and never made the signing we needed up front. If we had better scoring, converting chances we created, even at the beginning of the season,we would be in the CL and able to be closer to Inter in the standings this year.
I can’t fault Pioli for guys not burrying goals. In any sport, one thing you can’t teach is to score goals.
Exactly. But many here still thinks we would ever amount to something going the cheap route.
Spend money to make money with competent people who have sporting goals at heart.
I wonder how it’s coming for Gerry now, who wants to lift a UCL trophy with 20 million plus signings??
Perhaps firing Maldini and betting it all on Pioli wasn’t such a smart idea.
The players are not even feeling motivated.
As many of you said here that’s what Moneyball gets you.. I woke up today expecting to see Pioli gone but instead I have to read and watch this grinding butt telling us we second in the league with very competitive squad. What a shame!!! I said it earlier we should get used to this because with this management and owner we will be the Tottenham of Premier league.. Sad sad sad
The only news am anticipating is pioli’S sack
Pioli brought us the scudetto. No, scratch that. Pioli was in charge when the players brought us the scudetto. Therefore he deserves more than getting sacked 5 rounds before the end. But after May, we better have a proper coach with actual tactics to play with. Only then we could challenge teams such as Inter, Juve & Roma.
This is what you get not sacked pioli at same time with maldini , wasted 1 years zero trophy , knocked out on group CL . Finish runner up in serie A or not doesnt matter because it is lowest league income from top 4 europe league . The positive thing only all new comer show decent performance ( except pelegrino & his compatriot that go on loan to almeria ) . Yunus Musah maybe seems bad but he show fighting spirit and still young age 21 , with good coach he can find his best position
Our situation right now is bad, but not that bad, the financial situation and commercial aspects of the club are good, the management is fighting to get a new stadium, it’s the sporting sector that’s needs to be fixed, the first thing that needs to be done is get a good and young coach, someone with experience of European and Italian football, both as a player and Coach, we should not be afraid , from what has been written , Ibra wants to create a Milan version of Ajax, honestly it’s a good idea, both for the youth teams and the main squad, but the lack of Italians within the squad has shown, we need a core of Italian players, from the positions that will be vacant from the playing roster, the club should do it’s best to create and Italian core, or bring in elements from the youth squad.
Apart from the playing squad, I think Milan needs to bring an established manager who will sit between Scaroni and Furlani, as VP , someone who will be active both in the sporting side and the administrative side, someone like Gandini, he will guide and oversee what Moncada, Ibra and D Octavio and the rest of them are doing, the plan of the U23 squad is a good one, it needs to be set up.
Emphasis should be made in seeing how to incorporate youth players like Bathseragi, Simic, Coubis and Zeroli into the main team permanently, then the players on loan should be looked at carefully, and see how to bring some of them back, Maldini , CDK and even Alexis , then we need to make targeted buys, not a drastic overhaul, the new coach will bring out the fighting spirit in the players we have, they are just tired and frustrated with Pioli, they need new stimulations, the best Coach that we could have right now, would be Van Brommel, he is a former Milan player, a winner, is vastly experienced in European football, he is a fighter, and he is used to working with limited amounts of money, he has won titles with great teams, and throughout his career, he has worked and has been coached by very good coaches, and he knows Italy and the club,people need to understand this management we have will always consider the financial health of the club , before embarking on any purchase, which is good, but they also need to be fast in concluding deals, next season will definitely be better…
Oh Maldini, Maldini, Maldini…. If only we had Maldini… we would’ve won the Coppa, Seria A and CL in all likelihood – it would’ve been the greatest season in our club’s history (with Pirlo as coach, obv.)
Funny, when you only write in narrative that suits you.
In one hand you mock Maldini saying he brought in Messias, Origi, CdK and chased Renato Sanches. But you easily forgot to mention the likes of Theo, Tomori, Bennacer, Leao, Giroud, Tonali. All who had big hand in us winning Scudetto. That was all Moncada right? Only the worse are Maldini’s.
You mention he wanted to get rid of Pioli and get Pirlo but there’s no confirmation on that is it now?
Biased much?
I replied to you earlier up the comments:
“@Ted – yup he did well at the beginning obviously. Then he lost the plot. The mercato before last was probably the worst in Milan’s history.“
It’s always the boards fault but there are never any solutions. People always say “these clowns need to sell”… but no one ever completes the sentence – sell…to whom exactly?
Who – except for billionaires expecting a return on investment, are going to buy a football club worth over a billion Euros? Are you all going to club together and do a better job?
We can swap these billionaires for other ones, but you’ll hate those too, I guarantee it.
Everything off the pitch is going in the right direction, and I’m sorry to break this to you but if you want to win anything in modern football, that matters. It’s awful that it matters, but it does. The better players on higher wages will follow.
Or the alternative is we can bring in moderately wealthy Italian owners (who I’m sure made all their money selling cookies for charity…) and accept we are an average club in a farmers league. But of course, Great Uncle Bunga let the infrastructure rot for years and then sold to the highest bidder, so lets not be too sentimental.
Yep. Well said. New owner doesn’t automatically mean we’d buy the next messis and win 1-3 trophies each year.
At least the budget issues that weakened the team for two decades are now fixed. That should help in building a better future. And not lead us bankrupted…
Spot on – it’ll all fall on deaf ears of course.
There are Arabs who have needs for sportwashing and they have no problems signing huge sponsorship deals with companies in their indirect ownership or with a company one of their numerous cousins have to pump in money and bypass FFP. PSG do it. City do it. Newcastle do it.
And please don’t moralize about Arabs and their human rights violation and such because nothing in football is moral no more.
Yeah. Newcastle got once in the UCL and now they’re back to being a (upper)midtable team with FFP restrictions. Sounds like a wonderful future is waiting for them, eh?
I should probably be more clear in my post.
I am strongly against needless and headless spending. I was when Chinese did it and I still am now. That should be obvious since I am quite vocal from summer on, where I was against our summer spending spree although we did not go over our accounts.
But with someone financially in power like Arabs, we wouldn’t need to sell our stars in order to fund reinforcements. We’d be able to continue the given project that Elliott started with Maldini and Massara. A puzzle here and a puzzle there.
My biggest problem is, this new management decided to dismantle a project that gave us Scudetto in 3 years from start although it was a 5 year plan. They were not able to extend contract to the likes of Kessie because of imposed salary cap.
And someone else, namely some Arab consortium, would be able to loosen up a bit our strict salary cap with good sponsorship deal and just maybe we could be able to continue our project with the likes of Kessie and Tonali (betting scandal irrelevant here), Maignan, Theo etc. while adding needed puzzles.
Instead we are already looking at who of our prized assets will be sacrificed and sold because of salary cap and needing money to further reinforce.
“this new management decided to dismantle a project that gave us Scudetto”
weeeelll… Kessie got greedy and wouldn’t have signed even for 10M€ in the end. Romagnoli was too expensive and wanted to join “his team”. No complaints. Tonali was sold to improve depth (which it did but the old starters lowered their levels quite a bit).
Others leaving or “dismantling the project”? Well, not starter-level players and to be honest, Pulisic & others have replaced them sufficiently.
So… Kessie should have stayed or been replaced. That was a mistake. Replacing Romagnoli? Well… He wasn’t stellar in his last year but then again, Thiaw & Kalulu hasn’t been either. But at least they are waaaay cheaper and still young with room for improvement. Tonali? If we hadn’t sold him, he would have dismantled our project by leaving a huge (unpaid) gap in our midfield. No regrets there.
Sure. Extra money would be welcome to keep the current stars from leaving and attracting better players. But f*ng up the finances as Inter is doing wouldn’t work for us. We already saw that ~4 years ago with the euro bans etc. Too bad the FFP rules don’t apply to everyone equally. But I still dream that one day UEFA WILL punish Inter for pissing on the rules and piling up their debts.
But at least they can and try and get their targeted signings @bb, especially without wage cap. Imagine if we had the financial capability on Cases like kessie, botman, Hakan, gigi.
It does not guarantee automatic wins. But it sure as hell gives the club competing power on the market.
Case in point clubs like Real, man city psg don’t have to haggle unnecessary or plan on selling top talents or miss out good signings because of financial restrictions.
It’s honestly tiring to see top targets go to rivals or other leagues due to 500 to 1 mil more Milan could not give. 😩
“It’s honestly tiring to see top targets go to rivals or other leagues due to 500 to 1 mil more Milan could not give. 😩”
This. Absolutely. It sucks big time that Milan cannot compete. We need that stadium TODAY to get more competitive. We still wouldn’t get where we used to be but it would make a helluva difference though.
Exactly.
Redbird can’t have it both ways. There were ample opportunities to sign players for FREE and we chose not to because, as you said, we didn’t want to give that extra 500k – Thurman being a prime example.
But to say we cannot compete is wrong. We were a profitable club last season. Marotta built a championship side for Inter with many free agent signings: Thurman, Miki, Oana, Dzeko, Hakan, Sanchez, etc…. All FREE transfers. He just added Zelinski and Taremi for next year on FREE transfers as well. We could have and did have the opportunity to sign similar free agents but chose not to for WAGE cap reasons. Well you cannot have it both ways – a FREE transfer and a LOW wage LOL. If players are free they want to get PAID. We won’t do either it seems. We had Thurman – in an area of desperate need but because he wanted 5.5M and we only wanted to pay 5M he went to Inter. And we passed just like had happened with Hakan. Lukaku is another example. we could have easily signed him for FREE but again didn’t want to pay his salary so we went for Jovic who nobody wanted LOL. That says it all right there. January was another prime example. We had the opportunity to improve the squad with some low cost veteran signings – but again we chose to do neither. unfortunately you will never win consistently unless you spend some $$ in football. Nobody is saying we need to spend 80-100M on a player – we simply cannot. Italian football cannot financially compete with the EPL or other leagues. HOWEVER, when opportunities to get players on a FREE TRANSFER arise: Lukaku,, Thurman, etc….and you don’t do it because you don’t want to go over your wage cap – you are exactly where we are right now – watching another team lift a trophy. Had we signed Thurman and even a backup player like Miranda (in January) to spell Theo or let him move to CB – perhaps our season could have ended up much different. But we passed.
And what’s worse off is now we are in a position that Redbird really didn’t want to be in: needing to buy a player (i.e., striker) for a large transfer fee (50-60M)?? Which completely goes against the Redbird policy of not spending high transfer fees on any player. But alas it’s just a fantasy anyways. I mean, do fans really expect Redbird to actually do this? Buy Zirkzee or Sesko for 50-0M in a year where we didn’t even qualify for UCL knock out and lost all that UCL prize money??? lol. Sure. I will believe it when I see it. It makes no sense and would go against the Redbird policy but ya I’m sure it will happen lol.
All of this just shows we have an inexperienced and naive management team. Inter have Marotta one of the best in the business – and we have Georgie Boy – a man who has never been a football director. And we expect to win titles???? LMAO. Nah – what we should expect is exactly what Redbird said they would give us – the Atalanta model. Do enough to compete and if you happen to win a bit along that way – great. But don’t expect it consistently. Buy low cheap youth and develop them and sell high. That is the Moneyball (profit making)/Redbird model.
The main point in my “dismantle the project” is they spent 60 millions on midfield that is not functional (whole lot of mezzalas and no director like a proper Regista or DM) while neither Tonali or Kessie were adequately replaced. Midfield is the engine of the team and this is where they’ve failed badly in reinforcing.
That is why I said, a puzzle here and a puzzle there, targeted signings. But of course, in co-relation with a coach that actually knows what he needs.
Yeah. I’m hoping (probably daydreaming) Milan has a good enough roster already but just needs a proper coach to get the best out of everyone – just like Inzaghi is doing for Inter. Although we’d still need that new #9 no matter what…
always newcastle or psg for the examples, how about man city?
don’t talk about ffp, did it applied for teams such as chelsea, barca, madrid, psg, juve or even merda?
if so, what sanction did they have?
it simple really, are the owner just looking for money or also trying to get the glory for the club?
“don’t talk about ffp, did it applied for teams such as chelsea, barca, madrid, psg, juve or even merda?”
Can’t ignore it either as Milan is one of the clubs that actually has to obey the FFP rules – unlike the ones mentioned above. Like it or not.