Analyzing Gerry Cardinale’s Courageous Move: Why Paolo Maldini Was Not Confirmed for AC Milan

Time, as always, will be the only judge beyond personal sympathies and partisan interests. Since, however, today no one can know if Milan will truly be great again, with the continuity of those who are not satisfied with participating, in the meantime it is right to underline the courage of unpopularity shown by Gerry Cardinale. Paolo Maldini, in fact, represented and will always represent the history of Milan which he helped to write together with his unforgettable father Cesare, so it would have been much easier to confirm it. How easy it would have been to exonerate Stefano Pioli, riding the wave of a part of the criticism according to which he would not have the right profile to lead a great team. For the first time, however, the coach is rightly confirmed, while two executives are invited to leave the club, given that he also greets Ricky Massara with Maldini. And precisely because a similar situation had never occurred, historic of its kind, it is right to analyze the reason by trying to enter the American mentality of the owner of the Rossoneri club.

Used to sharing all his projects with the entire staff of his collaborators, Cardinale understood that Maldini was not perfectly in tune with his ideas, which have so far proved successful in all his activities. And since he is the boss who pays the money, it is right that he decides accordingly. Clarity and full sharing of the so-called project are the indispensable basis for working well and therefore regret for Maldini is out of place, even if romantically understandable. Also because after the main reason for the separation there are others, far from negligible. As Maldini himself has repeatedly acknowledged, the scudetto had arrived unexpectedly and this means that Pioli had performed a miracle without a team up to it, repeated this year in the Champions Leaguegiven that in the matches against Napoli and Inter he has never been able to count on new signings, starting with the most awaited and highest paid, De Ketelaere.

The fifty million made available by Cardinale a year ago were spent very badly and this is clearly the fault of the head of the technical area, to add to that of having lost the various Donnarumma, Calhanoglu, Kessie and Romagnoli without cashing even one euro. Just enough to understand that just as a coach is sacked if he doesn’t get the results, in the same way a manager can be sacked if he makes a mistake and moreover is not in harmony with the owners because he asks for more and more autonomy.

Therefore, there is no need to be scandalized, given that everything is clear, even if the difficult part for Cardinale and his new Milan begins now. Football, in fact, is a completely different world compared to other industrial realities, especially those geographically distant from ours, for which specific skills will be fundamental. In this sense, as everyone has understood by now, the French Geoffrey Moncada, head of Milan’s “scouting” since 2018, who among other things discovered Mbappè and chose Maignan as Donnarumma’s replacement, will have more powers and will collaborate with him managing director Giorgio Furlani, who compared to Ivan Gazidis has the advantage of being Italian and a Milan fan. The idea is that of a working group in which everyone is rowing in the same direction, with an even more important role for Pioli, who will be able to express an opinion on the signings without being invited, more or less politely, as happened last season, to line up the new players to demonstrate that whoever had chosen them was not wrong. And precisely because the transfer campaign a year ago weakened the team, it won’t be easy now to find real reinforcements in all departments.

This is the most urgent post-Maldini challenge, which will be followed by an even more important and difficult one. Because Cardinal, in addition to the sacrosanct right to choose his collaborators, also has the duty to build a competitive AC Milan in Italy and in Europe, who is not satisfied with reaching the semi-finals of the Champions League and fourth in the league, among other things thanks to the penalization of Juventus like this year. And only if he succeeds will he complete his mission.