AC Milan will enter a new era after Paolo Maldini and Ricky Massara were sacked as the technical director and sporting director yesterday.
As La Gazzetta dello Sport (seen below) reports this morning, the revolution at Milan will not just concern the departures of Maldini and Massara, but also could see changes to the previous structure.
Until yesterday, the two heads of the technical area dealt directly with the market, negotiating the buying and selling of players and the renewals of those already in the squad.
Now, it is expected that there will be an internal reorganisation that will see roles and responsibilities divided between those who already work at Milan, such as the CEO Giorgio Furlani who took over from Ivan Gazidis.
Market management will pass into the hands of Furlani as per the paper, Elliott Management’s former portfolio manager whose duties have already grown considerably in recent months, as he played a hand in the renewal of Rafael Leao.
While the work of Maldini and Massara with Leao’s representatives was of course productive, without the CEO’s entry into the scene to try and agree a strategy over the fine owed to Sporting CP, his extension would most likely have remained a difficult puzzle to solve.
Geoffrey Moncada – the head of AC Milan scouting who has worked for the Rossoneri since the early days of Elliott – is destined for more responsibility too. He has already contributed to signings such as Fikayo Tomori and Pierre Kalulu.
Moncada co-ordinates a network of ten scouts and in recent years has had fruitful talks with Maldini and Massara, so now might be the right time for him to take on a bigger role.
Cardinale believes in the ‘Moneyball’ style market, i.e. players selected on the basis of data. He stated before: “Everyone has them, the difference is how you use them. Billy Beane was decisive in convincing me that European football could be a great opportunity.”
Well, Beane himself – the player-trading guru who revolutionised baseball and inspired a successful film with Brad Pitt – is one of the pillars on which Milan will rely more and more for the transfer market.
He already collaborates with RedBird regarding the Rossoneri and now it will intensify. The same could happen with Luke Bornn, the man from Zelus Analytics, the data analysis company that planned the takeover of Toulouse.
