GdS: Stadium, director, coach, mercato and €610m – RedBird and Milan facing defining period | OneFootball

The week of the Napoli game is very emblematic in many ways for AC Milan, because they are a club which have everything that the Rossoneri do not.

La Gazzetta dello Sport point out how Napoli have a traditional structure, an owner who acts in first person and a chain of command centred around a strong coach: Antonio Conte. Milan, on the other hand, said ‘no, thanks’ to that coach a summer ago and its owner is a fund.

RedBird Capital invested €170m in December to refinance the loan with Elliott and reduce the capital quota to €489m, thus changing the club’s horizons. The new loan deadline is July 2028, the date by which Gerry Cardinale’s fund will have to return the sum obtained in 2022 with 7% interest.

In total, therefore, RedBird owes €610m to the old owner of Milan and now faces a very complex moment, with a restructuring of the management on the horizon.

A new sporting director will be chosen presumably in April, a new coach will be identified in the coming weeks, a revolutionary market expected for the summer. The last year, in terms of results on the field, has been dark, with logical negative consequences on the budget.

For the 2024-25 budget, Milan expect a small profit or a small loss, but the game is already being played in 2025-26, when the club will not have the revenue from the Club World Cup (for which Milan have not qualified) and the Champions League ( barring any sensational surprises, they will not qualify).

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It is the worst possible scenario. The Europa League, which is still to be won, would have a much lower impact: little more than a consolation prize. RedBird therefore risks running into the first budget deficit of its management: Milan closed at €6.1m in 2022-23, the first profit since 2006, and a year later declared a profit of €4.1m.

The numbers are very different with Elliott, which invested more on the market to achieve a complex turnaround, the recovery from the Li Yonghong disaster to the championship: €-155.9m in 2018-19, €-194.6m in 2019-20, €-96.4m in 2020-21, €-66.5m in 2021-22.

The turnaround was clear. RedBird declared an initial investment of €600m and added €170m for refinancing and €55m in two instalments for the stadium. On the market, until January 2025, it never spent more than €20m plus bonuses for a player, unlike what Elliott did (€38.4m for Paquetá, €35m for Piatek).

In 2023, RedBird spent €20.5m for Reijnders, €20.8m for Pulisic, €19m for Loftus-Cheek, €21.2m for Musah, €21.1m for Chukwueze and €15.5m for Okafor. Last summer they added Morata, Pavlovic, Fofana and Emerson Royal for a sum not far from €65m in total and in January they spent over €30m in Santiago Gimenez, with Walker, Joao Felix, Bondo and Sottil also joining.

Photo by Daniele Venturelli – AC Milan/AC Milan via Getty Images

The next few months will therefore be decisive in defining the success of this Milan era: after a negative year, a radical change is necessary. It will not be easy. RedBird wants to complete, together with Inter, the purchase of the San Siro area by July, to then start the construction project of the new stadium.

It is an investment that, in the medium term, will require great efforts from the owners. In the same months, the CEO Giorgio Furlani will choose a sporting director to lead the new course, in an evolving situation, without a clear favourite.

Soon, a decision will also arrive on the coach, who will change, and on the players: there is a good chance that a good part of the core of the team will change. A clear picture: all the possible changes, all together. They say it is 2025, it is year zero.