While on the pitch Sergio Conceição studies the team to be fielded against Fiorentina in the evening, off the pitch it is CEO Furlani who is working on reassembling the organizational chart, starting from a basic principle: a sporting director will arrive who will work “in a team” with the other reference points in the various areas.
It was also Furlani who spoke of long timelines for choosing the new profile, indicating a possible target around the Easter period. In reality, the negotiation with Fabio Paratici, formerly of Juve and Tottenham, had almost reached its destination — ahead of schedule: an advantage to be exploited in rebuilding the team, currently ninth in the standings and far from the European zone.
The architect of the new Milan will not be Paratici...
The negotiation became tangled around the issue of the sporting director's well-known disqualification. The deadline set for July 20 and the limited operability until that date was an unsolvable knot.
What are the profiles being evaluated at Casa Milan?
Thus, at the beginning of April, the casting starts again with interviews with other aspiring candidates — professionals with whom there may have been an initial approach without any concrete follow-up: from Igli Tare to Tony D’Amico, from Giovanni Sartori to Giovanni Manna.
Three out of four are still under contract: another non-negligible detail that could further delay the timeline, while the club is eager to move forward. Also because it will be the new sporting director who suggests the name of the coach, and it will be the coach, with his footballing ideas, who will influence the transfer choices, as reported by La Gazzetta dello Sport.
More time will be needed to delve into the characteristics of the candidates, more or less well-known. Igli Tare is known to have been head of Lazio’s technical area for fifteen years, working alongside president Lotito until summer 2023. He has good skills in enhancing young talent, one of the reasons why he had already been contacted. In London, where meetings regarding the new Milan are taking place, Tare had been received by the usual Cardinale — this time not accompanied by CEO Furlani, but by advisor Ibrahimovic.
Tony D’Amico, on the other hand, is Atalanta’s sporting director, after gaining experience at Verona: could he arrive in Milan as a duo from Bergamo with Gasperini? Nothing more than one of the many hypotheses. Giovanni Sartori, on the other hand, is the mastermind behind Chievo, then Atalanta, and finally a Champions League-reaching Bologna: all teams that widely exceeded expectations, thanks to the intuition and choices of the transfer market man.
Today, in tandem with Italiano, he occupies fourth place in the league standings — a position the Rossoneri can only dream of. Could what they’ve done together in red and blue be replicated in red and black? Sartori and Italiano for Milan: another idea, nothing more concrete.
Manna is the youngest in the group, born in 1988: he reached the role of sporting director at Napoli directly from Juventus’ youth ranks, first as head of the Primavera, then of Juve Next Gen. The same reasoning applied to the other candidates would apply here — would he arrive hand-in-hand with Conte? A decidedly complex path. Just as it’s difficult to imagine that Milan, in search of Italian identity, would decide to restart with a foreign executive — though Furlani will still meet with them to get an even broader view of possible solutions: from Markus Krösche, head of the transfer market at Eintracht Frankfurt, to Thiago Scuro, in the leadership of Monaco.
Interviews
So the casting has reopened for the assignment of the role: the new sporting director will naturally play a leading part. CEO Furlani will choose who he wants by his side, and he will be the one handing over the pen for contract signings. Teamwork requires that the selected candidate has the favor of owner Gerry Cardinale (and Paratici did), as well as that of Ibrahimovic and also Geoffrey Moncada, the current technical director.
After the match against Fiorentina, in a league campaign that no longer holds major ambitions, the challenge of the future will begin again right away: Milan must renew itself quickly to return to competing at the top. From this phase of the season already looking to next year, the club wants to think about the Scudetto — and no longer about how to reorganize the counter-offensive against Inter.
