Reasons to cut Milan some slack [Bonus Article]

One can’t help but notice that in the last weeks or so, perhaps even the last two months, the Milan management has been on the receiving end of heavy criticism. While the 2023-24 season was disappointing on many fronts, this criticism feels rather unjustified based on the progress made recently, and some of the ‘insults’ are just factually incorrect.

It has been said many times since Gerry Cardinale took over that he’s all about the money, and that’s true. He wants to see Milan blossom in the way that he knows that the club can, becoming self-sufficient, and without relying on hefty loans from American firms (which the Chinese evidently love). So, more money in Cardinale’s pocket? Yes and no, and certainly not in the way many fans imagine it.

As a successful businessman, with many investments across various sectors, there is no doubt that Cardinale has an exit plan in the back of his head. First, however, he wants to achieve the aforementioned goal: making Milan stand on its own legs. That has almost been achieved already but there are more things to do, such as the U23 team and the stadium project which we will get to.

But we digress, what we meant to highlight was that the ever-present insult of ‘Cardinale doesn’t invest any money’ actually isn’t true in any sense. Milan are investing more than any other Italian club at the moment, 1) because they have the money to do so and 2) because they have ambitious plans. We are taking two steps forward, while other clubs are taking one step forward and two steps back.

So, in case you aren’t convinced yet, what are the things we can look at to show that Milan - under the guidance of Cardinale - are investing more than we have seen in a long time? The commercial growth is a fantastic example, having adopted a ‘spend money to make money’ mentality (read our long piece on the success), but we could easily talk about the stadium project or the U23 team instead.