A number of worrying details about Milan’s current state off the field have been revealed by people inside the club.
American hedge fund Elliott Management acquired the Rossoneri last year after previous owner Yonghong Li failed to pay back the loans he took out to buy the club.
They have since spent €154million over the last two windows, which of course includes the combined €70m for Lucas Paqueta and Krzysztof Piatek in January.
They then spent spent €7m on Rade Krunic, €16m on Ismael Bennacer, €20m on Theo Hernandez, €30m on Rafael Leao, €11m on Leo Duarte plus the €5m cost for the two-year loan for Ante Rebic.
The Financial Times published a special feature in which they looked at the way Milan are changing under Elliott.
They appointed Casper Stylsvig as the club’s new chief revenue officer, and the former global sponsorship director at Manchester United has admitted he had a lot of work to do upon his arrival.
“It is probably too much to call it Stone Age but [AC Milan’s] commercial team was definitely 10 years behind the Premier League and probably two, three years behind the top clubs in Italy,” Stylsvig said.
An unnamed club insider added some more worrying information.
“They’ve handed Maldini and Boban a loaded gun,” says a club insider.
“If they try to fire [Maldini], he’s going to say, ‘these owners don’t understand Milan’.
“If they turn it round in a couple of years, no one will care. But in terms of bad press, there’s a huge liability here.
“The risk/reward of owning a club like AC Milan for a company like Elliott seems really bizarre.”
There has been speculation that Elliott acquired Milan with the intention of investing, building the valuation of the club up and selling on for profit.
Another unnamed club executive added: “I think it’s going to be really hard to turn Milan round and sell it for $1bn.
“I keep thinking there must be a more obvious play here that I’m not seeing.
“It could be as simple as Paul Singer’s son wanted to get involved in football and they have so much money that they could just do that.”
Senior portfolio manager Franck Tuil revealed some of the objectives
“We want to win on the pitch. We want the football to be attractive to our fans.
“We want the football results to improve in order to move toward participation in the biggest club competition, which today is the Champions League.”
Giorgio Furlani, another portfolio manager, added: “You’ll see the fruits of this work at the end. Whenever the end will be.”
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