Gerry Cardinale will be present at San Siro to watch AC Milan take on AS Roma in the first leg of their Europa League quarter-final tie, but there is more than just that on his agenda.
This morning’s edition of La Gazzetta dello Sport (seen below) confirms that Cardinale will be in the stands for the grand show at La Scala del Calcio for the first instalment of yet another Euroderby involving Milan.
The RedBird Capital chief, however, will not simply limit himself to attending the match but will move to address some issues related to the future, which the paper have highlighted.
Calls with Comolli
First of all, Cardinale needs to evaluate – and in the near future – whether and with what role Damien Comolli could join the Rossoneri management. The current president of Toulouse – a team linked to RedBird – will meet with Gerry Cardinale tomorrow.
The owner of Milan, regardless of how this meeting with the Frenchman goes, will find himself facing two paths. The first: insert Comolli in the role of CEO, knowing that he would again upset the hierarchies. The second: keep going for another season with things as they are.
That would mean CEO Giorgio Furlani stays and that he would continue to form a working group with directors Geoffrey Moncada and Antonio D’Ottavio, plus of course Zlatan Ibrahimovic who is a Senior Advisor.
In recent months Cardinale made it clear publicly how much faith he is putting in Zlatan, and having already bet on the Swede could already be an indication of how Cardinale intends to proceed.
Furthermore, Comolli is managing – on behalf of Cardinale – the sale of Toulouse to Fenway Sports Group and for this reason the Frenchman’s efforts, at the moment, would be aimed at this.
U23 team and stadium
There are other issues on which Cardinale will not miss the opportunity to at least be updated on. First of all, Milan have to start up an U23 team in Serie C next season.
It is a long-term operation that will have costs and which will lead to the emergence of other figures. One of these is Jovan Kirovski, one of Ibrahimovic’s men: the American was the sporting director of the Galaxy when Zlatan arrived in America.
His arrival in Milan seems like a done deal and he could dedicate himself to the B team. The coach should be Daniele Bonera, who has already been on Pioli’s staff for several years.
And then there is the theme of the stadium, always at the center of Cardinale’s thoughts. This evening in the Council of San Donato, a motion will try to block the program agreement: if this is rejected the agreement will be initiated. Then a period of about a year and a half of long but necessary technical meetings and debates should begin.
If we actually get all those things, the revenue from the stadium, the young players finally giving us depth (it looks it’s about to happen tho) and hopefully some more sensible transfers like a cdm and a good giroud replacement, we could start to slowly see our path to being a european giants again