The Paolo Maldini and Ricky Massara era at AC Milan has officially come to a close as the pair were sacked from their positions as technical director and sporting director respectively.
Through a statement on their official website Milan announced Maldini’s departure and one is expected to follow for Massara too, leaving the Milan world in shock given we are less than 48 hours on from the end of the 2022-23 season.
The duo formed a close relationship during their four years together and have been given a lot of credit for building the young core that Milan have now, leading to a Scudetto victory, a Champions League semi-final this season and three consecutive qualifications for the competition.
Maldini completed 34 signings during his time as the technical director (from summer 2019 onwards), and FootballItalia have listed them:
Summer 2019
➤ Rade Krunic from Empoli – €8.6m
➤ Leo Duarte from Flamengo – €10m
➤ Theo Hernandez from Real Madrid – €22.8m
➤ Rafael Leao from Lille – €29.5m
➤ Ismael Bennacer from Empoli – €17.2m
➤ Ante Rebic from Eintracht Frankfurt – €7m
January 2020
➤ Zlatan Ibrahimovic – Free agent
➤ Alexis Saelemakers from Anderlecht – €10m
➤ Asmir Begovic from Bournemouth – Loan
➤ Simon Kjaer from Sevilla – €3.6m
Summer 2020
➤ Pierre Kalulu from Lyon – €1m
➤ Brahim Diaz from Real Madrid – loan
➤ Sandro Tonali from Brescia – loan then €19.5m
➤ Ciprian Tatarusanu from Lyon – €1m
➤ Jens Petter Hauge from Bodo/Glimt – €4.8m
➤ Diogo Dalot from Man Utd – loan
January 2021
➤ Soualiho Meïté from Torino – loan
➤ Fikayo Tomori from Chelsea – loan then €31m
➤ Mario Mandzukic – Free transfer
Summer 2021
➤ Mike Maignan from Lille – €15.4m
➤ Alessandro Florenzi from Roma – loan then €2.7m
➤ Olivier Giroud from Chelsea – €3m
➤ Fodé Ballo-Touré from Monaco – €5.4m
➤ Tiemoue Bakayoko from Chelsea – loan
➤ Junior Messias from Crotone – €5.5m
January 2022
➤ Pietro Pellegri from Monaco – loan
➤ Antonio Mirante – Free transfer
➤ Marko Lazetic from Red Star – €4.5m
Summer 2022
➤ Yacine Adli from Bordeaux – €10m
➤ Divock Origi – Free transfer
➤ Charles De Ketelaere from Club Brugge – €32m
➤ Malick Thiaw – €5m
➤ Aster Vranckx – Loan with option to buy from Wolfsburg
➤ Sergino Dest – Loan with option to buy from Barcelona
January 2023
➤ Devis Vasquez from Guaranì – €470k
Seria A tittle & quater final CL, each season top 4…with that amount of money & result, can tell me other exec like that?
So for 2 wrong signings this American fire Maldini . But he really fired him because he didn’t like him and his ego is so big like all these idiots Americans he should stick to baseball and cricket
Just take a look at American owned Chelsea and Livepool now……
This is inexplicable. Maldini and Massara worked their magic to give us a scudetto, a UCL semi. The club better have a good explanation for this
Milan, in fact, finished on 5th place. But Juve – 10 points bring Milan on 4th.
Ibrahimovic won the title, in fact!
Anyway, Pioli should go, Milan played un ugly football. And without Ibra, played nothing!
A lot of misses:
9 misses in 2022
4 misses in 2021
2 misses winter 21
4 misses 2020
2019 was fine.
Milan had small budget, but still missed so many free transfers. They should extend Kessie who is still young and Hakan, and not spend for new arrivals.
We will se how moncada will do.
But…. BUT…
Maldini and Massara and also Ibra had big impact on players in Milanello.
Tell me which sporting directors/clubs that don’t have misses????
Not to mention that MOST of those players are
Tell me which sporting directors/clubs that don’t have misses????
Not to mention that MOST of those players are under 10M kind of players or on loans, OF COURSE, most of them would be misses. CDK is SURELY a miss NOW, but fortunately, he’s young (might improve) or might still have a resale value – not a catastrophic miss.
Can anyone else do a better job with HALF the charisma and grace that he has? Mind you, he’s been weeding the true players from mercenaries, players like Theo/Tonali/Leao/Bennacer etc who COULD have gone to better pastures elsewhere like Gigio/Hakan/Kessie before them, but chose to stay and extend. Did you not think that Maldini has some kinda influence over that decisions?
We just lost our soul and some people here are only thinking about money, money, money.
He didn’t listen to moncada…
Just to compare he took Vrnackx instead of Enzo Fernández…
Origi versus Kolo Muani
I’m getting tired of the Enzo Fernandez comments. Do you have PROOF that we had an actual chance? Do you have PROOF that Enzo Fernandez was interested in Milan? If he was so bloody cheap and so obviously good how come no other club in Europe outbid Benfica to sign him? How come the great Giuntoli at Napoli who discovers such talents like Kvaratskhelia (another one we missed oh no!) didn’t sign him? What about RB Leipzig who always sign promising youngster? Atalanta? What if Enzo Fernandez had gone to Benfica and been trash? Hindsight is 20/20 bro.
Enzo’s agent confirms it. You can find the article if you search for it.
Thats 19 bad signings and 15 good ones. Almost a 50-50 record which still doesn’t look good. It’s ok to miss on some players but more then 50% bad signings is bad even for smaler clubs. Than if we add the other things that you said like the missed free transfers and all the lost players for free it starts to look even worse. However it would have still been wise to give Maldini some different position in the club out of moral reasons.
Hindsight is 20/20. Maldini spent 124M, 32M, 93M and 55M. That’s 304M over 4 years. it’s a huge success to manage 10 quality players with such budget. You can’t blame Maldini for players exit since owners didn’t want to match players demands. Do you want him to pay players from his own pocket?
And he still took us from the banter era where we struggled for europa league to cl semis and a scudetto
Some people don’t really understand football at all. Yes, there were “misses”. Firstly every single director had at least as many misses as MM.
And second and more important. Having (very) limited budget simply increased the risk of having misses. Other teams are smart too. You can outsmart them for some time (and Maldini really outsmart nearly everyone for some periods) but in the long run there will be misses. This is the natural consequence of spending less (and yet aiming high).
Both Maldini and even Gazidis said in the past that there is no cheat in this story: eventually you have to spend.
The rest about moneyball and data is a bunch of bull, to justify the lack of investment.
Thank you Paolo for all you’ve done, incredible work. Legend.
He definitely had his misses. But Paolo built our core which is as strong as any team in the world and on our crap budget that’s impressive. Maignan, Tomori, Theo, Bennacer, Tonali, Leao all his work. And I have a feeling Thiaw will become consistently good too. His biggest moment was to have the vision to see what the team truly needed. A leader and a champions mindset… a man among boys. So he brought in Ibra which so many did not want but he saw it and we now have another scudetto and CL semi which we 100% would have never been close without Ibra. I did not like how non-italian this team became under MM but overall they did good work and I already can’t stand Cardinale and Redbird… everything about this guy just screams weasel…
Not only that, specific players have said that they wouldn’t have come were it not for him. Theo surely would not have come, Leao might not have renewed, Maignan is pissed. Let’s see what happens now, because in 2024 all of our stars might be handing in transfer requests.
Oh, by the way, Maignan and Theos contracts are up in 2026. That means that they will have to renew or be sold NEXT SUMMER to avoid the whole “one year left will he leave on a free or cut price drama” in 2025. How likely is this to happen now? In Theo’s case it was probably already going to be difficult, as he is one of the best LBs in the world, but I think it will now be impossible. Enjoy Theo’s last season with us (and maybe Mike’s) next season everyone!
Yeah, given that Theo may be leaving, it’s a shame about management’s decision not to trust the kerkez that Moncada found and purchased Ballo-Toure.
Agreed. Articles out there are saying that cardinale wants to focus on stats based transfer market. Apparently they dont base their management on stats. Stats on M&M so far are outstanding. #redbirdout
Summer 2019. Those were bought together with Boban. I bet e.g. Rebic was 100% Boban.
And yet, for one season Rebic did exactly what he was supposed to do. For a club lacking in many areas and not in Europe, it was a good return. Getting stuck in oblivion behind Leao would be a drag on anyone.
Kessie left coz cardinale wont spent more money for his salary bro.. and also cardinale wont spent more money for Enzo then he loan in Aster vrancx. With this limited budget and free agent american style, what world diretore football can bring this big result for milan. The diretore wake up milan from his dark age. Cardinale should be more grateful.
His first 2 windows were A+ and established the foundation for our team. The last 6(!) windows brought 5 starters to make a quality 11 man squad, with only a couple of mostly reliable subs. NOT even close to good enough for Serie A and CL, especially when you factor in the losses of key performers like the !@#$ snake and Kessie for free, who were never properly replaced. That we had to overwork Diaz (not even good) says it all. I will forever love Maldini, but not as the TD.
ac milan my life time club,
whywe had to allowed stupid american garry whopper cheesburger and free refile soda drinker to buy or club…
he doesnt understand nothing about football and his firibg culture shud saty in burger king where he eats his lunch every day
This is hilarious. Most of the so-called “flops” were minimal spends and loans – save for CDK – who at 22 his career is not over. What more do you want. You want to buy steak and lobster but go to the grocery store with only $5?? Lol. Good luck with that