The Rossoneri CEO will manage the whole market after the separation from the two managers. The roles of the current Chief Scout and Mr. Moneyball
It will be a Milan never seen before. And not only because the director and director who built the 2022 Italian champion team will no longer be there, but also and above all because they will not be replaced. The Rossoneri revolution will not only come from names, but from the roles themselves: the classic structure that until yesterday saw the two heads of the technical area deal directly with the market, negotiating the sale of players and the renewals of those already in the squad, will leave the place to an internal reorganization that will produce a Devil decidedly different from the one we were used to. Roles and responsibilities will be divided between those who already work in Milan and those who collaborate: let’s see how.
The role of Furlani
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The management of the transfer market will pass into the hands of Giorgio Furlani, the club’s managing director since last November, when Ivan Gazidis said goodbye. From the point of view of ownership, nothing could be more logical, also because the weight of Elliott’s former portfolio manager has already grown considerably in recent months: the negotiation that led to the renewal of Rafa Leao, undoubtedly the most delicate of all those faced by Milan in the last year and a half is proof of that. In fact, Furlani’s intervention was decisive in unblocking the knot of the fine imposed on Leao by the Portuguese justice for the facts related to the farewell to Sporting in 2018, a fine which in the end was paid by Lille: the work of Maldini and Massara with Rafa’s representatives had certainly been productive, but without the CEO’s entry into the scene, Leao’s extension would most likely have remained a difficult puzzle to solve.
In this context, the figure of Geoffrey Moncada, head of AC Milan scouting who has worked for the Rossoneri since the early days of Elliott, is destined for an upgrade: the former prodigy of the Monaco transfer market will be the first inspirer of the strategies on the objectives to pursue. From him, Moncada has consolidated experience within Milan, and has contributed to important operations, from Tomori to Kalulu, the central defense duo who won the Scudetto last year. Moncada coordinates a network of ten observatories and in recent years has had fruitful dialogue with Maldini and Massara.
Mr Moneyball
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Cardinale believes in the “Moneyball-style” market, i.e. players selected on the basis of data: “Everyone has them, the difference is how you use them – said RedBird’s number one recently -. Billy Beane was decisive in convincing me that football could be a great opportunity”. Well, Beane himself, the guru of player-trading who revolutionized baseball by inspiring a successful film with Brad Pitt, is one of the pillars on which Milan will rely more and more for the transfer market: he already collaborates with RedBird on the Rossoneri club and the it will intensify. The same could happen with Luke Bornn, the man from Zelus Analytics: he is the data analysis company that planned the takeover of Toulouse, he can raise the bar with Pioli’s squad.
June 6, 2023 (change June 6, 2023 | 08:04)
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