scaroni

Scaroni explains why he is proud to be ‘president of the only team in Milan’

Paolo Scaroni has spoken of his pride at being the president of AC Milan, aiming a jab at Inter by stating they are the only club in the city.

Tonight marks the unveiling of the ‘125 years of Milan’ photobook at the Milan Flagship Store in Via Dante in the city centre. Created with Assouline, it celebrates the glorious history of the club and all of its triumphs.

Gerry Cardinale wrote a foreword in the book in which he spoke about an ‘obsession’ to return Milan to the pinnacle of European football, and that is something Scaroni will want to do too. He spoke on stage, and his comments were relayed by MilanNews.

“I am from Vicenza, I came to Milan to attend Bocconi [the university]. I came here and I got lost on the way, I didn’t know where San Babila was,” he began.

“To think that after so many years I am president of the only team in Milan, let’s be honest: in Milan there is only one, a real one… it gives me an incredible emotion.

“To think that I have been president for almost seven years now, I am a long-term president, I have had the privilege of celebrating 120 years of history of Milan and today 125 years.

“This book is wonderful, I saw it last night for the first time and it is new for me too. It is full of wonderful photographs that even for me, who know Milan a little, represent so many new and beautiful things. It should be bought and kept in a display case.

“My favourite image? I like all the images where we lift a trophy. The truth is that I like it especially when we win. When we lose I have to say a little less (smiles). When Maldini lifts the cup, when Berlusconi has lifted so many cups, especially the international ones, those are the ones we should be particularly proud of.”

Milan may be able to boast 19 Scudetti and seven Champions League titles, but the past glories of the 1990s and 2000s feel like a long way off. This season has had a rocky start under Paulo Fonseca, with the most recent setback being a 3-3 draw with Cagliari on Saturday.

Tags AC Milan Paolo Scaroni

9 Comments

  1. Talk is cheap. Due to the clowns that are managing this team, including the very Scaroni, we are not as competitive as the other team in Milano that Scaroni is trying to mock and ignore. It’s not by talking that we’ll make it so. It’s by achieving results on the pitch.

    And Gerry… for someone who allegedly has an obsession with Milan returning to glory, he certainly hasn’t done what he should have: hire a proper sporting director, request that his underlings actually selected a proper coach, and drop the silly cap of 20 to 25M for signing any new player (instead, sign mediocre players, sign mediocre coaches, and you get mediocre results; it’s not rocket science).

    Because, see, he got a club that had won a Scudetto recently, had made the UCL semis, had managed to routinely place in the UCL slots, in three occasions being #1, #2, and #2 in Serie A, and we have now the team being a mid-table team to whom the Scudetto seems already out of reach, and to whom qualifying among the top 4 for the next UCL seems to be a very difficult goal to achieve.

    So, what exactly are your actions that justify your so-called obsession, Gerry??? You’re the same guy who said that winning is boring and that making the UCL is good enough. Who do you think you are fooling when you talk of your supposed obsession???

    1. That’s called public relations. Maybe even populism. Obviously you can’t say you’re here just to be richer, fans won’t like it, but you can talk like you’re one of them and say abstract things like you have a vision, you want to win, you are ambitious, etc. You can also blame the mayor, the league, the refs, etc.

      After one year and a half with this management, I think it’s very obvious that all the decisions taken are in line with what could be expected from a Wall Street investment funds CEO with no ties to the club and many ventures in entertainment.

      1. Yes. I think that I completely understand what’s Gerry Cardinale’s project and end game, or at least I suppose I do; it’s speculation but I think that if we observe what’s going on, chances are that this is really what’s behind it. Still, even for his own hidden goals, he is not going correctly about it. Let’s see. In my understanding, here is what I think he wants:

        1) Get youth players on the cheap and develop them, so that later they can be sold for a profit (see the selling spree idea, below). That explains the emphasis on investing on Milan Futuro.

        2) In the relatively near future, dangle the idea of a new stadium to prospective buyers of the club. For this, do get SOMETHING going (like purchasing the San Donato area, cleaning it up, talking with the San Donato mayor, also still talking with Milano’s mayor for a possible purchase of San Siro which sounds like a stalling strategy) but actually don’t complete the job (see the stalling part above), because if you were actually serious about completing it, it would take an investment of more than 1 billion Euro, therefore destroying the profit at a point-of-sale. So, by starting the project but not finishing it, Gerry can say to prospective buyers: “look, get on board while you can, for a bargain. See, this club will in a few years own its own modern stadium; I’m already working on it; and then it will explode and become extremely profitable.”

        3) Continue to make the UCL in order to profit from the prize money, merchandise, and ticket sales, so that the club continues to post a positive financial account which would also impress prospective future buyers who won’t want a club full of debts. For this, actual Serie A titles are not required; that explains why he said that top 4 is good enough and winning is boring.

        4) Don’t spend too much on new signings of more established players with smaller developing potential, again so not to eat into the profit margin; that explains the 20M to 25M cap, and the hiring of a cheap, yes-man coach who doesn’t request big investments.

        5) Hang on to some essential players for now… (which explains why Theo, Rafa, and Mike were not sold despite all the speculation last mercato) but don’t be surprised if when Gerry decides to sell the club, a couple of months earlier he goes into a selling spree, in order to generate funds to pay back the vendor’s loan that he still owes. That would also include the young prospects like Camarda, Zeroli, Liberalli, etc.

        ————–

        OK, so from the standpoint of an American private equity fund that responds to share holders and couldn’t care less for silly things like Italian Serie A trophies that don’t actually deliver a whole lot of money, what he is doing seems to make sense. Why should American investors care about “soccer” anyway? They find it boring and think that the real profitable sports are American Football, Basketball, and Baseball. But hey, since the Arabs seem to be silly enough to like to purchase “soccer” teams, let’s get into it so that we buy cheap, clean up the financial mess, balance the books, increase the valuation, and later we sell the teams to them for a bigger price, for a profit!

        However where he is wrong, is that he underestimated the other Serie A rivals and opponents. The above strategy is making the club drop to mid-table, while Inter, Juve, Napoli, Atalanta, and even lesser clubs like Fiorentina and Lazio, are actually trying to win titles or at least compete (more efficiently than we do) for the 4 UCL slots.

        So, the push to cheap mediocrity to ensure a positive financial account is actually likely to have a negative impact on the bottom line, because if the AC Milan club misses the UCL spots, it will be an enormous blow to the club’s valuation. Not only Gerry will not make the 120 plus million Euro in prize money, merchandise, and tickets, but also the world-wide brand of AC Milan will suffer, and that impacts on the money too. Kids in the United States won’t be buying Milan jerseys if the club is not even in the UCL. They are bandwagon and fairweather fans anyway, which explains why such a young club like Manchester City has such a huge following in the USA; its because they win, and new fans want to join a winning operation.

        In this situation, his hope of eventually trying to sell the club for a huge profit to some Arab sovereign fund may find no takers.

        The Arabs are rich enough. They are not in it for money, which they get more than they can spend, from oil, not from football. They are in it for prestige and cultural prominence. They want to thump on their own chests and say “see, we the Abu Dhabi royal family own 81% of Manchester City (true), one of the top 3 best clubs in the world.” They will NOT want to purchase a controlling interest in some Italian mid-table team that doesn’t even make the UCL.

        So, Gerry directed his clown puppet Ibrahimovic to hire the mediocre Fonseca, thinking that he’d be able to get away with it and still make the UCL thus preserving the profits. Big mistake. Hire mediocre people, expect mediocre results.

        So now I’m curious to know if Gerry will recalibrate once he realizes that the way things are going, the valuation of his asset is going down the drains.

        Gerry is probably not stupid. He wouldn’t be this rich if he were very stupid. So, I think there will be some end point to our current misery. Once he realizes that Fonseca is not getting us to next year’s UCL, he will drop him like a hot potato, and may actually scratch the cap and tell his minions to hire some competent players, in order to make it back into the profitable UCL and revamp the world-wide AC Milan brand.

        1. I swear you’ve literally wrote all my inner thoughts that I’m hesitant to put down haha. It’s the ‘what I suspect’ but I’ll play nice lol 😂.
          I think Gerry’s miscalculated quite a few things. First is that club size matters. This isn’t a small French club with a 15m valuation which turned him 4x profit. Milan isn’t an obscure club you can just 4x the value. Second he’s miscalculated expectations of fans. The reason for a banter era was precisely that the squad didn’t match fan expectations. Thirdly, he miscalculated how easy/difficult it is to win things in Europe. I think he thought winning Serie A and making a UCL semi were easy to do. It aint. The impact of firing a legend like Maldini also plays into that. Future results will ultimately be measured up against those two very difficult things to achieve by him. But his ego costed him that sense.
          For all the brashness, I’d really like to have seen him bring his own people in seeing as he brags about being good at sport. Maintaining Moncada, Ibra and Furlani ain’t it. I’m actually surprised by this move and call into question how much he specifically is responsible for his previous success.

        2. Agree mostly, albeit I think that he will build the stadium. He was involved in the new Yankees stadium and he knows that a stadium will raise significantly the value of the club at resale. The loan would be on the club anyway, and the interests, so not a burden for Jerry. And his ego would be highly inflated with such achievement.

          1. Luigi has a good point on this though. He could also leave say half way through or before it gets completed as long as his asset appreciates and he makes the profit. I could see it go either way too..he could see it out and show proof of concept and revenue streams.
            The new Yankee stadium though has lower capacity than the older one but more box seats meaning more matchday revenue….the whole sporting-entertainment experience that he likes to quote. However in the US many stadiums are paid for by the public/taxpayers (John Oliver has a special about this). Not sure he’ll get that sort of concession in Italy.
            Also, Yankees haven’t won the world series since that happened apart from one at the start. Quite interesting. Not a great show of sporting credentials but money making credentials

  2. This free arrogance brings nothing and cover low competence and lack of ambition to win big by our owner and “management”…

  3. Yes scaroni. This is the only team in milan, trophyless cardinale milan.

    We need to buy new young, cheap, foreign defender scaroni. Our defense is leaky, even though we already spent 35 million buying royal and pav.

Comments are closed

Serie A Standings

Live football scores . Current table, fixtures & results.