It is not over-dramatic nor hyperbolic to say that AC Milan’s whole world has been turned upside down within three weeks of the season ending.
The surprise retirement of Zlatan Ibrahimovic after the final match of 2022-23 was an emotional curtain call after a rollercoaster campaign with players, fans and even the big man himself in tears. Or so we thought.
Then, it became apparent within 48 hours of that win against Verona that club icon Paolo Maldini and his right-hand man Ricky Massara were being relieved of their duties as the technical and sporting director, plunging the project into disrepute.
There were all kinds of destabilising rumours that followed with suggestions that the dressing room did not take the news well and that Maldini wanted to replace Stefano Pioli with Andrea Pirlo, among other things.
However, the dust then settled as it always does and it seemed the new management duo of CEO Giorgio Furlani and chief scout Geoffrey Moncada had reassured key players about the strength of the project and the desire to build.
Their first major action will be to sell fan favourite Sandro Tonali. According to Fabrizio Romano among other sources, the midfielder will join new Premier League power Newcastle United for €70m including bonuses, and Tonali will get a potential €9m net per season for six years.
It is just over a week since we wrote about the importance of optics when it comes to Milan’s project, and how the proposed RedBird ‘Moneyball’ model runs the risk of seeing the club develop into another Borussia Dortmund or RB Leipzig, given the emphasis on player trading to self-finance signings.
The news of Tonali’s sale does not exactly reinforce the notion that the modus operandi of the Furlani-Moncada duo will be to keep the young core and build around them with complimentary pieces, instead it is quite the opposite.
Maldini’s foreshadowing
There were some rather interesting comments from Maldini last summer pertaining to the club’s new-found economic strength and how that leaves them with regards to the necessity to sell players in relation to rivals Inter, for example.
“Big offers rejected? Yes, more than one. We told some clubs to not even show up. We have the accounts set, we don’t have the necessity to sell, but there are no unsellable players,” he said.
The two-part answer to the question is a fairly apt summary of the Tonali situation too. Milan do not need to sell anyone – they are set to register a profit in the 2022-23 accounts – but it would be amiss of them not to listen to offers that come in.
The problem is that nobody could foresee such a huge bid coming in for a player that is held very dearly in the hearts of Milan fans. The news exploded overnight earlier in the week that Newcastle had put forward €50m and then €70m, and that Milan were reflecting.
Therein lies the difference between the two clubs in play here. It took Milan weeks to close the negotiation for Charles De Ketelaere last summer, often haggling over €1m here and there. Newcastle could raise their offer €20m in a matter of a few emails.
Thus, Maldini’s words begin to ring true. The Rossoneri did not put Tonali on the market, yet a Premier League side with vast riches came along and really tested them with bid after bid, to the extent they are possibly paying above the market rate for the player.
Emotion vs. objectivity
There is a quite simple way to separate the two sides of the argument when it comes to the sale of Tonali, and it is the head versus the heart.
Of course some will argue that both say the same thing in this scenario, but the basic premise is that all Milan fans would have liked Tonali to remain at the club and become a bandiera (flag-bearer), just as the boyhood Milanista probably dreamt of himself.
For many, the boy born in Lodi represented more than just another player. He was a symbol for Milan’s project because of his ability and his potential, but also because he was tracing the path that supporters around the world fantasise about.
This feels different from the Kaka and Andriy Shevchenko sales for a lot of people because those two players hailed from Brazil and Ukraine, with no real concrete ties to the club and where taking an obvious upwards step in their career was always a possibility.
Tonali was different. He was born and raised in Lombardy, his father was a season ticket holder who went to games home and away, he did the hard yards at Brescia and Milan stole him from under Inter’s noses. It was the fairytale.
Not only that, but he won things with the club too. Tonali’s upward trajectory ran parallel with that of the team’s as Europa League football turned to Champions League football, and a Scudetto was followed by a return to the semi-finals for the first time in 16 years.
Now, he is leaving the team he adores and one which will play in the Champions League for the third season in a row in order to move to the north of England. Newcastle have an exciting project of course, but they aren’t his club.
The counter-balance to this is to look at the financial side of things. There is always a difference between what other clubs would probably deem a target to be worth versus what that player is worth to their club.
Sometimes it can see negotiations break down pretty quickly, in fact we see that pretty often, though Newcastle have the spending power to match virtually anyone in the world at the moment and they were willing to meet Milan’s price.
Transfermarkt are of course not the one defining source for player valuation, but just as an interesting example they have Tonali’s worth as €50m. Their algorithm factors in a lot of different metrics too from statistics to contract situation.
That implies the Magpies are paying a bit over the market rate for a player that Milan deem to be very important to them but quite literally – by the very definition of the word and what has unfolded over the last 48 hours – not unsellable.
The Rossoneri are a very data-driven club since the change in management, and the ‘Moneyball’ method does not account for sentimentality. It accounts for doing objectively good business, even at the expense of taking a big PR hit.
Uncertain image
That leads us onto the next aspect to consider, which is how all of this appears both from inside the Milan environment and to the onlookers.
Starting with those outside looking in, the club must resemble a bit of a mess right now. Maldini and Massara’s exits so soon after the season ended were a very bold and obvious change in direction, and had Milan been on the stock market we might have seen major movements, such was the shock.
For other teams, it is the kind of business that perhaps makes it obvious that the Diavolo do not have any untouchable players, not even the ones who are touted as future captains and are so attached to the club.
In fact, it says that everyone has their price and the negotiating table is always open. It didn’t take long for rumours to follow suggesting that Theo Hernandez is the subject of interest and €100m might be enough to begin a discussion.
For Milan’s rivals, it is good news for the time being. Of course so much hinges on what happens in the coming weeks and how/if the money received is reinvested (more on that to come), though at present Stefano Pioli has lost a key piece and all the uncertainty does not exactly lend itself to an imminent Scudetto challenge next season.
Moving to the Milan fans, there is a mood of anxiety, frustration, disappointment and even anger at what has taken place over the past three weeks. When it seemed there was a platform to build on for 2023-24 and beyond it has been ripped out from underneath with blow after blow arriving.
You would be hard pressed to find a fan who at present feels more confident about the future based on what has unfolded. Instead, the vast majority appear confused and if anything quite alienated by the actions of the owners and management.
What about the other players? Well, if the rumours of unhappiness in the dressing room after Maldini’s exit are true and the attempts to reassure about the strength of the project were then followed by the sale of a star player, the mood will be an interesting one.
From a purely speculative point of view, there is zero guarantee that other key pillars of the squad such as Theo and Mike Maignan will want to hang around knowing that they are essentially trading chips.
They are important to the plans of course, but they now know they have a price and no emotional investment will be involved in the decision making of the powers that be.
It is crucial to mention at this point that Milan followed the correct protocol for the sale of a player. An offer came in that they deemed to be good value and they presented the opportunity to Tonali, who could have said no but instead decided to accept the idea of a move away, with how much resistance we may never know.
The reality and the future
Not for the first time this month, the entire Milan world will have to try and return to a state of peace and begin to think about life without Tonali, and what now comes after him.
There is a vital premise to all of this: Tonali’s legacy at Milan could be one of bringing in the money to make the squad better overall.
It is an irrefutable fact that the team need strengthening in a lot of areas including full-back, right wing, No.10 and striker, and the budget going from €50m to €120m – as a working example – helps create plenty more room for manoeuvre.
With things as they are currently though, Milan have weakened the area they were arguably weakest in to begin with. Franck Kessie was never adequately replaced last summer as Aster Vranckx and Tommaso Pobega never hit those heights.
The former has now gone back to Wolfsburg after his loan expired while Tiemoue Bakayoko has also left and Ismael Bennacer is out until 2024. That means that at the time of writing the starting double pivot would be Rade Krunic and Pobega.
Going into the summer there was the need to sign two midfielders, now that probably becomes three. Tonali operated both in the deeper-lying role and also as a mezzala, so one of each of those must be on the list.
What is imperative though is that Milan do not try to replace the Italian ‘in the aggregate’, thinking that signing more players of lesser quality will take the team forward. Now, the liquidity is there to secure signings that really make a difference.
How much of the money is reinvested and how it is reinvested is what a lot of supporters will hang their entire opinion of RedBird and the new regime on. As aforementioned, if they do things right the squad can improve.
The challenge now though is that the squad has to get better. There is no alternative. This is a fan base that are very much on the edge and even the most tolerant have a limit.
Losing Ibrahimovic, Maldini, Massara and now a supposed pillar of the future in Tonali is a very difficult way to start the summer, and it is one that must be perfect from here onwards.
