Adriano Galliani has revealed his two biggest regrets as Milan CEO – passing up Alessandro Del Piero and Cristiano Ronaldo.

Galliani spent 31 years managing Milan with Silvio Berlusconi, building five European Cup-winning teams between 1986 and 2017.

“Milan were having financial problems at the time of our arrival, but the team already had good foundations in place,” he told Sky Sport Italia.

Adriano Galliani has revealed his two biggest regrets as Milan CEO – passing up Alessandro Del Piero and Cristiano Ronaldo.

Galliani spent 31 years managing Milan with Silvio Berlusconi, building five European Cup-winning teams between 1986 and 2017.

“Milan were having financial problems at the time of our arrival, but the team already had good foundations in place,” he told Sky Sport Italia.

“We signed Gullit and Van Basten right away and, the following year, Rijkaard also arrived. We already had a great defence and added more champions to the squad.

“Kaka has always remained in my heart. Shevchenko was immense, but the same goes for Ronaldinho, Weah, Boban, Savicevic…. There are so many I still have an affinity towards.

For all of his successes in the transfer market, the 75-year-old confessed there were two glaring misses.

“Tevez was supposed to arrive, but he never turned up. We’d already done a deal for Roberto Baggio five years before his arrival at Milan.

“We also tried to take Del Piero before he went to Juventus, and he’s one of the two players I most regret not signing.

“Padova offered him to us but wanted 5bn lira, a very big fee for such a young lad, and we weren’t convinced.

“The same goes for Cristiano Ronaldo: he was 16 and Sporting CP asked us for something like 16 or 17bn.

“We also courted Totti for a long time, but he never wanted to leave Roma.”

The sale of Zlatan Ibrahimovic to Paris Saint-Germain was considered the beginning of Milan’s demise, and Galliani admitted the striker stopped talking to him for a while.

“We already looked at him when he was still at Ajax, but back then he didn’t score many goals.

“He improved a lot under Capello and [assistant Italo] Galbiati, and in 2006 we found an agreement with him.

“However, we found ourselves dealing with Calciopoli and therefore everything fell through.

“I sold him in 2012 and he didn’t talk to me for some time, in part because I promised I’d never sell him.

“It was all due to budgetary reasons, the same reasons we also had to sell Thiago Silva.”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Tickets Kit Collector