Gerry Cardinale Leaders in Sport

GdS: Objectives faded and stadium project stalls – RedBird’s difficult start to life as owners

RedBird Capital completed the purchase of AC Milan at the end of August and so far they have had a rather difficult start to their tenure, a report has outlined.

La Gazzetta dello Sport report that Gerry Cardinale should be back in Italy for the first leg of the Champions League round of 16 tie against Spurs next Tuesday, but the problem is that – if the team do not regain form quickly – he might witness a ‘slaughter’.

Milan are back in the knockout stages for the first time since 2013-14 which has seen €60m in revenues from the competition alone come into the accounts this season, which is added to the just over €40m from last season.

These revenues are much-needed to give extra momentum to the project, but the team currently sit in sixth place and it would be disastrous not to be a part of the top European club competition next season, with a lot of work undove.

Cardinale’s start to life at the helm of Milan has been complex with the team struggling on the field, but his nature is to wait until the end of the season to make important decisions, just as he does with other sporting ventures.

It is also worth noting that Cardinale does not personally govern the operations of the club, instead dictating the guidelines and then delegating them to his management whose work will then be evaluated in June, as well as that of the coach.

Speaking of the work to assess, Milan saw three of their four targets vanish in January as they are now out of the Scudetto race after a bad run of form, were eliminated in the Coppa Italia by 10-man Torino and lost the Supercoppa to Inter. What remains is to qualify for the Champions League, and right now Milan are sixth.

Cardinale is also carefully observing the evolution of the Rafael Leao question after giving approval to Paolo Maldini and Ricky Massara to formulate an offer of €6.5m net per season.

He will not go further than that, so if the negotiation ended unsuccessfully then it will be necessary to take precautions such as a potential sale to monetise from his exit and be able to fund a replacement.

Cardinale will never say a word on the choices of the management in terms of the players that they have signed, but if the €50m allocated for the last summer window look practically useless, someone will then have to answer for it.

Then there is the stadium. The RedBird chief has the construction of a stadium as his big vision, preferably alone – or rather without Inter – as president Paolo Scaroni clarified recently. The problem is that Milan are bogged down in this respect as well by typical bureaucracy.

The club are waiting for news on the possible constraints that apply to the current San Siro and despite the fact the public debate process is now over, we find ourselves once again in a phase of stalemate.

At least two other options are being considered by Cardinale and his collaborators including Sesto San Giovanni, a potential site that Gerry had already personally visited last year.

Tags AC Milan

6 Comments

  1. This focus on the owners is just ridiculous.

    Unless there’s corruption or human rights abuses going on – which the media would have zero interest in – the owners are the least interesting thing at a club.

    Whatever money they have is the money they have. There’s no point moaning about it. Or crying “betrayal” because they didn’t turn out to be your sugar daddy.

    We do need to move stadium. That’s a valid discussion. But it seems like every Italian club other than Juve are struggling to do this.

    The test will be whether or not they create stability. That is the most important thing at any football club because that is how a club builds a connection with its fans and success.

    If they have a long term project they have my support.

      1. Money doesn’t grow on trees. Banks don’t just lend out money they’ll never make back. All owners are “ambitious”, some just operate under realistic business models while others either cheat or game the system (a type of legal cheating) due to circumstances outside of the business segment (football). Take City and Juventus. Juventus is simply an example of plain old cheating. For 25 years they have found ways to influence refs, cook the books or inflate player value. Otherwise their expenditures would look a lot more like ours, Inter’s, Roma’s or Napolis. They advantage they have in owning a private stadium is significant, relatively speaking, but not earth shattering. Then you have clubs like City and PSG, whose revenues have nothing to do with football and everything to do with gaming the system. PSG benefits from a shirt sponsor also owned by their owners, so no oversight on how much the sponsor pays out to have their names on the shirt, unlike normal companies who have to answer to shareholders as to why the company is spending $X on sponsorships. They benefit from a TV deal for Ligue 1 from BeIn Sports, also owned by their owners, and likewise also not subject to proper control by company shareholders asking why they company is dishing out $X for the French league.

        As for the rest there is Chelsea, breaking records to finish outside of Europe, and other clubs like Madrid, Bayern, Liverpool, Arsenal, etc., spend money on a targeted basis. Maybe one 60m player per summer. When have you seen Bayern spend 200m on five players? We can get close to this, but first we need to stabilize the club, reduce the massive debts from the Berlusconi and King Kong Li years, and get a stadium built to enjoy the reported 100m increase in revenues from that. Once that solid floor is established, a nucleus of a good squad can be maintained by spending 50-60m on one or two players every summer to fine tune/upgrade.

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