Milan’s new sporting project has faced widespread criticism, but there are signs that the club is finally headed in Gerry Cardinale’s intended direction.
Who will run Milan’s new sporting project? Nearly a month after the mass-dismissals following the end of last season, the answer has finally been revealed: No one who wasn’t already at the club before.
Milan’s decision not to bring in anyone new to their managerial structure has faced heavy criticism. Many wonder: Why did Milan arrive at such solution only after their failure to appoint a new head of football. In other words, does the club emphatically believe in this new project, or was it loosely strung together u nder desperate circumstances?
There are also reasons to be skeptical of the narrative that Milan are merely embracing the decentralized, data-driven managerial model that has brought so much success to Liverpool over the past decade.
For starters, it has long been known that RedBird Capital Partners own a minority stake in Fenway Sports Group (FSG), the owners of Liverpool. Furthermore, Gerry Cardinale has been open about his admiration for FSG’s work at Liverpool, effectively describing the ownership as a blueprint for how to find competitive success in football while remaining financially sustainable.
As such, it was already speculated that Milan’s sporting project could mirror Liverpool’s in the early days of the RedBird ownership of Milan. On the other hand, the following years have implied otherwise – not solely in terms of results on the pitch, but also in terms of the club’s decision-making.
With this being the case, one might ask why Milan would suddenly attempt to replicate the Liverpool project now? Especially with the seemingly sudden establishment of this new Milan project.
On the other hand, there are indications that Milan have planned to head in this direction long before they failed to secure a new head of football and sporting director.
The foreshadowing interview from May
Last May, Gerry Cardinale spoke to La Gazzetta dello Sport about a number of topics related to Milan.
Although he was positive about the prospects of Milan returning to the Champions League at the time, Cardinale was not entirely content with how the season had played out – let alone how the previous years had played out.
About the disappointing results, he said the following:
“I’m obviously not happy. Max [Allegri] isn’t happy, the players aren’t happy. Winning remains the priority and I assure you that everyone wants to win. Not winning the scudetto is a disappointment – not finishing in the top four would be a failure.”
Furthermore, about the ongoing fan protests at the time, Cardinale said this:
“It gets under my skin and I feel an enormous responsibility to get things in order – with an urgency that no one should question.”
Later on in the interview, Cardinale would defend the club’s financial policy, citing that no other club in Italian football had spent more on the transfer market over the previous three years. At the same time, he conceded that Milan had not spent this money efficiently, and thus returned to the need for change.
“I would give a higher rating for the amount of money we’ve spent than for how we’ve spent them. We need to do a better job of ensuring a direct correlation between spending and winning. We haven’t managed that yet. We haven’t done a good job and we’re going to get things in order. We need to examine the structure and the football operations, and collaborate with the coaching staff and the sporting director to figure out how we can work better together.”
Previous quotes hint towards imminent changes within the club. Here he emphasizes the club’s managerial structure and day-to-day functions for the first time, which is more consistent with the changes the club is now set to undergo.
When asked about what the club would do in the summer, Cardinale did not explicitly mention new recruitments, but simply said that Milan need to “evolve the organization.” When asked to elaborate, he gave a long answer that has circulated on social media in recent days:
“The goal is to improve the organization and elevate it to a world class level. Our aim here is to win as much as possible every year, but also to ensure that, while doing so, we are laying the foundations for sustained success. We could spend a fortune signing established players and aiming for immediate victories. But then what? We need to do both. This summer, we will review the organization and see how we can address the gaps, because we haven’t been up to the mark. It’s not just about replacing people; it’s about examining the organizational structure and ensuring we have everything right – from the coaching staff and player recruitment to the sporting director and the academies. It is a holistic ecosystem that needs improvement. When I took over the club, that ecosystem didn’t exist. Sport, like many industries, is about people. You need the best people; you need to attract the best talent across every area. We aren’t there yet.”
According to some, Cardinale’s emphasis on the need of talented people across the club, as well as his admission that Milan are not there yet, have been contradicted by the club’s failure to recruit anyone to their managerial structure in the summer – that is, excluding head coach Ruben Amorim.
On the other hand, it is known that Milan at least made attempts to bring in accomplished names like Ralf Rangnick and Markus Krösche. Perhaps they were merely meant as complementary additions to the organization anyway – rather than centerpieces to build the organization around. In fact, this would be consistent with the breakdown in talks between Rangnick and Milan, which was reportedly caused by Rangnick demanding control over the managerial structure.
Beyond that, in terms of profile, both Rangnick and Krösche are names that align with the more modern strategic approach that Milan now seem increasingly oriented towards.
However, most importantly, Cardinale emphasizes that the club’s restructuring is not merely about replacing departing figures, but about changing how the club’s managerial structure functions. This further indicates that Cardinale was planning an internal restructuring long before the failed attempt to recruit a new head or football and sporting director, and that the empowerment of figures like Hendrik Almstadt and Bobby Gardiner is not merely part of an improvised backup plan.
“Moneyball Milan” – a long-awaited development
There are other signs that Milan’s ostensible adoption of the so-called “Liverpool model” is no sudden development. One can guess that it has been Cardinale’s intention ever since he took over the club. Again, his tremendous admiration for the Liverpool project is no secret, and beyond that he has successfully implemented a relatively characteristically comparable project at Toulouse FC.
The question remains: Why has Cardinale seemingly been unable to implement such a project at Milan? It’s hard to say exactly why, but it’s plausible that the club hasn’t functioned the way Cardinale wants in recent years, and that he has consequently looked to make changes.
Actually, it was already in December of last year that Matteo Moretto first reported that Milan were set to undergo changes in 2026. Although he primarily referred to the club’s economic situation, with the ownership’s loan from Elliott Management yet to be repaid at the time, he also mentioned potential changes within the club’s managerial structure.
In early April, Moretto would similarly report that Gerry Cardinale was evaluating changes to the club’s managerial and sporting structure – regardless of their potential qualification to the Champions League.
Once more, the club’s new project, with a decentralized structure and an increased emphasis on data analysis, does not seem to be a response to the failure to appoint a head of football and sporting director. This is also supported by Matteo Moretto having reported on Bobby Gardiner’s increasing influence at Milan before issues arose around the club’s attempt to recruit Markus Krösche. In fact, Gardiner is said to have been involved in the recruitment process for a new head of football and sporting director, and may even have had a say in the decision to hire Ruben Amorim.
While this has not been explicitly confirmed, it is loosely supported by another report by Moretto. When asked about Milan’s recruitment process for the head coach role, Moretto said that it was led by Cardinale, Zlatan Ibrahimović, interim CEO Massimo Calvelli, a team of headhunters, while data analysis supposedly also played a role in the process.
Curiously, Ruben Amorim had previously been reported as the favorite to take over from Jürgen Klopp at Liverpool in 2024, even if the move never materialized. According to several sources, he was the candidate who impressed most in Liverpool’s internal data analysis.
It is fair to guess that Milan landed on Amorim because of their own data analysis, and that the decision was made independent of Markus Krösche’s potential arrival. After all, the club decided to offer Amorim a three-year contract, with an option to extend by a year, before getting the green light for Krösche. In part, this implies that Milan have plenty of faith in Amorim. Beyond that, their decision to go through with the appointment before securing a head of football or sporting director, is consistent with their new decentralized managerial structure.
If there is one central figure in this new Milan project, it is Gerry Cardinale, who seems to be inclined towards a far more hands-on approach than in previous years. Perhaps this is a direct response to the club’s internal issues in recent years, and Gerry Cardinale’s vision can now be fulfilled at last.
Whether or not it brings results on the pitch is an entirely different conversation.
