Gerry Cardinale is expected in the Middle East again and this time in the company of his right-hand man Zlatan Ibrahimovic, according to a report.
La Gazzetta dello Sport (seen below) confirm that the duo will be in Saudi Arabia over the weekend. Are they looking for new investors? Officially no, but they are among the VIPs invited to attend the Grand Prix, scheduled for tomorrow in Jeddah.
Twenty-four hours later Milan will welcome Empoli to San Siro and Zlatan is now a permanent presence. In Saudi there would still be plenty of time to meet potential investors, and it was Cardinale who opened the doors to the entry of possible minority shareholders, looking at the rich Middle Eastern area with particular interest.
RedBird, and Cardinale, would remain in charge but the corporate structure would be reviewed. The objective would not change: to make Milan an increasingly competitive team by exploiting the resources that a future partnership would guarantee.
Milan would increasingly broaden its horizons, respecting Cardinale’s initial manifesto which involved renewing the Rossoneri’s appeal around the world, while it would also obviously be a way to broaden the revenue base.
A curiosity: among the expected guests at the GP is also Paolo Maldini, the director who was at the helm for the Scudetto win before being sacked by Cardinale.
The corporate issue could also erupt the next few months for the Rossoneri, and rumours of a meeting between Cardinale and the top management of PIF – the Saudi sovereign wealth fund – were back in the news circulating in Saudi Arabia.
Yesterday, however, the CEO Giorgio Furlani, in yesterday’s pre-match on Sky, denied this: “New members? We all work to bring results for Milan. The rest is all speculation, there is nothing true.” He would hardly have admitted otherwise.
