Amid the turmoil raging across the world, Milan’s season has nonetheless ended and a new one will soon begin. In fact, one only has to wait formally, given that in “normal” clubs this is the moment to reap the rewards of the planning carried out in the preceding months. At Milan, however, as often happens, a clean slate has been made, and the feeling is that this is only the beginning. Yesterday, a statement from RedBird Capital Partners announced the end of the working relationship with Milan of CEO Giorgio Furlani, sporting director Igli Tare, head coach Massimiliano Allegri and technical director Geoffrey Moncada.
At present, therefore, everything is in the hands of Gerry Cardinale, Zlatan Ibrahimović and Massimo Calvelli: the three will have to appoint a new CEO, a sporting director and, of course, a new head coach, with the name of Andoni Iraola currently seeming the most prominent. But these will only be the first three building blocks of a much larger plan. Which players will the club continue to rely on (there was no real need to distinguish between players in the press conference meeting)? Who will be sold? And above all, what will the transfer market strategy be? Will the wage cap remain the same, around €5–5.5 million? Will continued great importance be placed on the annual cost of players (Nkunku is the exception, the average is around €12–13 million per year)? And above all, how crucial will it be to end each season with a positive balance sheet?
The answer is fairly simple and lies in the nature of Milan’s majority shareholder, RedBird Capital Partners: an investment fund led by Gerry Cardinale, which manages around $10 billion in capital and invests across various sectors, including sport and entertainment. In other words: when he invested in Milan (€1.2 billion, of which half was obtained via a vendor loan, later refinanced so that Elliott exited completely), Cardinale found several investors, both “traditional” and otherwise, to whom he promised that in X years they would receive a significant return from the deal when Milan is sold, likely after building a new stadium and thereby increasing the club’s value. In the period between these two points, as has happened so far, it is highly unlikely that he will inject additional money “at a loss” through capital increases needed to cover any losses.
Cardinale's new Milan, player trading remains central:
Player trading will continue to be highly important, perhaps too important: buying low to sell high, both to continue investing and to cover any financial deficits caused by failing to achieve certain sporting results and, consequently, the loss of Champions League revenue. Last year, Reijnders was sold in a hurry to save the 2024/25 accounts; this year it remains to be seen what will happen. In the summer of 2025, Thiaw, Theo and Okafor were sold at significant profit. Pobega, Colombo and Jimenez were bought outright by Bologna, Genoa and Bournemouth. Musah will return to the club, but Chukwueze could still be decisive: it remains to be seen whether the Nigerian will stay at Fulham and thus generate around €24 million.
Broadly speaking, all these sales might be enough to avoid a financial loss for the year, but it is not excluded that a “Reijnders-style” sale may be needed again. What is certain is that this summer, and therefore for the next financial year, also without Champions League revenue, the club will have to cope with the absence of income from Europe’s top competition. The squad size will have to be increased to compete in the Europa League, and consequently the squad cost may reasonably be expected to rise. How can these two things be reconciled? Through further sales, as happened a year ago. Unless Cardinale decides, which is an almost fanciful scenario, to accept a loss and then cover it with a capital increase. Especially since Milan is outside UEFA’s Settlement Agreement and over the years has imposed a form of self-austerity that allows it to post losses, within limits, for a couple of years without UEFA coming back to intervene.
Source: Milan News
