AC Milan owner Gerry Cardinale has issued a Christmas message to supporters, once again reiterating that his vision for the club is to win many trophies and admitting he is not fully content with the current situation.
The best Christmas present for Milan fans would of course be three points against Salernitana tonight, which would make it three wins in a row and would continue to ease the pressure after the difficult period in November.
The Rossoneri followed up their Champions League victory over Newcastle United last midweek with a comfortable 3-0 victory against Monza at San Siro in Sunday’s early kick-off, closing the gap to Juventus in the process.
Cardinale published a message on the official website that is addressed to fans and discusses a number of different topics, from on-field results to the financial future of the club.
“Dear Rossoneri Nation:
“As 2023 comes to a close, I wanted to share with you holiday greetings and best wishes for the New Year from all of us at RedBird and AC Milan. Like every year, our season so far has had its fair share of positives as well as challenges.
“As we enter the holiday break, we are still in contention for the top of Serie A, and while we fell short of progressing through to the next round of Champions League, we now have our sights set on advancing through the Europa League competition.
“Like all of you, I am not content with our current position in Serie A or Champions League, but I know from my decades in sports that sporting competition is a marathon, not a sprint, and there is a virtue to continuity and consistency.
“Since we assumed ownership of AC Milan over a year ago, we have endeavored to strike the right balance between the immediacy of winning and the foundation building that will ensure a return to the championship legacy that AC Milan achieved long prior to our ownership.
“Sports and European football is emotionally charged, and that is also the great beauty of football. But emotions cannot get the better of those who, like us, have the responsibility of making decisions that balance the immediacy of winning with the foundation building that will ensure a return to the championship legacy that AC Milan achieved long prior to our ownership.
“For our fans and our team, we will continue to bring best practices to AC Milan both on the pitch as well as off the field – and if we get this right with a level of consistency and professionalism, then AC Milan will have a realistic shot at achieving its goals in Serie A and in Europe.
“The great thing about European football is that it is the ultimate team sport, and this team includes the fans right alongside our players, the coaching staff, management and ownership. Everyone on this team wants the same thing – to win, to be number one, to be Italian champions and to be European champions.
“There is no ambiguity there and there is no settling for anything less. But European football today has never been more competitive with more money – individual, institutional, sovereign – chasing elusive championships.
“Money alone, however, will not win championships. To be successful, both in the short term but also importantly for the long term, we should focus on spending smarter, more creatively and more disciplined than our competitors.
“So as we reflect over this holiday break, all of us at AC Milan are well aware of what we’ve done well, and more importantly what we have not done well and need to improve. As with everything we do, we will take our sense of urgency for improvement and ground it with thoughtful, methodical analysis that balances change with foundation building.
“The goal is not to win episodically but to win consistently for the long term. That is what our fans, our players and our coaching staff expect from ownership, and that is what we will give them. You should expect that we will continue to make whatever improvements we can to be more competitive on the field and to enhance our financial resources off the field to invest further in the club.
“On behalf of our players, coaching staff and the team at Casa Milan, I want to thank our loyal and unwavering fans for their continued support and for always holding us to the highest standards that honor the winning legacy of this historic franchise. I wish serenity to each of you, to your loved ones and to the ever-growing family of Milanisti.
“Forza Milan, always! Gerry Cardinale.”
I trust Redbird will do the right thing to get us back to our best. But it will take time and patience. I believe in the next 2-3 years we will be back to being a protagonist like we were in the late 80s, early 90s and 2000.
This project needs time and patience. We already have a good foundation and lots of young players who have experienced winning a scudetto.
If we can keep our best players and add quality players to this team we will achieve our goals on the pitch. Forza Milan. Sempre!
Don’t trust these fake Milanisti!
We saw last summer how they respect the heritage of this great club, by firing our most legendary player who as a director always put the club 1st. He may not have got everything right, but at least you could trust his motivations, that’s what got him axed, he was not a yes man, he is a Milan man.
Redturd et al have 1 motivation, to make a profit. They will sell off our best players and continue to turn over young talent for profit
“They will sell off our best players”
That would be called progress as – correct me if I’m wrong here – in the past (not that long ago) Milan let key players leave for free. But I assume some fans think that’s better than selling them for good fee.
Well if you win a title sure, it was better to keep said players. We now seem to selling our best and not even close to winning anything. We’re worse off than last year and that’s a fact
Be careful, Maldini’s one man mafia and his burner accounts will come after you if you even question his decision to let of 100M in player value leave for free…
“That would be called progress as – correct me if I’m wrong here – in the past (not that long ago) Milan let key players leave for free”
letting players go for free, because they don’t want the club to be milked every time the player & his agent want to renew his contract with exorbitant salaries (also following the salary platform allowed by the club owner).
and after that, signing a player in the same position who i think is better than the previous one, with a much cheaper salary, and win Serie-A.
letting players go for free, because he believed in player’s promise that he will extend his contract to the club & fans.
and after that the club could reach the UCL semifinals
the club loses revenue from the potential sale of these players?
absolutely!
but there’s also a bigger achievement than money, which is improved performance.
yes, he is a green technical director with many flaws, and probably naive too.
also signing some “wrong” players, but is there any technical director of a football club who has never done that?
above all that, he continued to learn to get better, because of his love for the club (i think being a player with only one team and winning many trophies throughout his career is more than enough proof of this).
AC Milan is definitely not just Maldini, because players come and go, and every era has it’s legends, but Maldini is definitely AC Milan.
If we all are being honest the CL semi’s had more to do with the draw than anything else. If Milan were on the other side of the bracket it would’ve been the round of 16…
Yeah well they pissed on the project that was in place for last 3 years. A project that brought Scudetto and CL semis. Now they’ve turned this club into Dortmund. The club is being tossed around vulture fonds and investment firms like a back alley hooker. They don’t respect the history and culture of this club. This bozo didn’t even know how many CL titles Milan has. It’s not about sporting side for them but capital gains and re-sale. He wants a longterm success? Not with his debt. He should sell to some Arabs.
Spoiler Alert:
Most comments here will lack complete objectivity and people need to blame something/someone to blow off some steam.
“It’s all ownership’s fault. They did everything wrong and nothing right. Maldini was Jesus and walked on water and these Romans came in and speared him.
We should buy and sell like we did in the Berlusconi years, the Chinese year, with the money we don’t have buying players we can’t afford, settling for players no one wants…”
Sound about right?
No one is saying we should buy and sell like when Li was here. I haven’t seen that one but maybe I’ve seen the spend oil money one. But with our current owners u gotta admit this look really bad. Sell and spend (money btw that was achieved from the prior processes) and yet somehow ended up much worse sporting-wise than the previous years and with a better start than they did. So yes, people are going to be critical of how things pan out especially if they’re doing much much worse in at least one of the competitions and just about the same or worse in the other 🤷♂️. Maldini wasn’t Jesus and he had many, many faults but he was also the fall guy from a group that made decisions together. Much like they’re doing now or pretending to do. And this gets labelled as working in harmony by the board and the best transfer window in a decade…only to be what? Worse off than before? Do you not see the issue here?
This project shit on sporting ambitious, but this Ac Milan need a better ownership and managers to finish more powerful players