New Milan owners RedBird held their first press conference today, confirming Paolo Maldini will remain as director after Elliott Management passed over control. ‘I hate losing. I wanna win.’
The takeover paperwork was signed today to complete the €1.2bn deal, although the expected closing is no later than September 2022.
Elliott retain a minority financial interest and some seats on the board of directors, but the big question marks were over directors Maldini and Frederic ‘Ricky’ Massara.
Their contracts are due to expire on June 30 and Maldini in particular warned his situation was far from certain, as he would not remain if the club intended only to float along and not step up to the next level.
RedBird founder Cardinale spoke to reporters at Casa Milan today and practically the first thing he did was confirm talks with Maldini were “positive” and they would “continue” working together at the club.
The American apologised for not speaking the language of his forebears, but his words were clear to all Rossoneri supporters.
“I hate losing. I wanna win,” declared Cardinale.
He was a guest of Elliott during the Scudetto celebrations, confessing in 25 years of sports investment, he’d never seen anything like it as the open top bus travelled through the streets of Milan to Piazza Duomo.
“I’ve experienced the World Series, the Super Bowl, the NBA, but nothing gave me the excitement I felt that day. I hope we can all experience it many more times with our fans.”
🤝 A warm welcome to the Rossoneri family to Gerry Cardinale ❤️🖤#SempreMilan pic.twitter.com/9vvhuZak6i
— AC Milan (@acmilan) June 1, 2022
“Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith?”
Matthew 8 : 26
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Or, in other words: what do the ‘doom & gloom’ crew, the eternal, incorrigible and all-around pathetic pessimists have to say now? Maldini will follow at the head of the sporting directorate and the new boss has just declared in a loud and clear voice: “I HATE LOSING. I WANNA WIN”. That is, he will obviously invest to strengthen the team.
In addition, he was impressed and moved with the extent, the dimension of the celebrations of our fans for winning the Scudetto.
Anyway… what else do you want, damn it?!?
Happy milan got good owners, and that elliot wanted good responsible owner. Isee mila as a rolemodel club in italy. Lucky they didnt get chineese owners.
Oh yer darn tootin right he will. Now, git and start investing yer bucks in some offence men.
As a Milan fan, I am always hoping for the best but the fact Maldini remains gives alot of hope for the future and I really hope they can invest in this team
Hmm, no mention of the fact that Redbird only brings 300 million euros in liquidity from the 1,2 billion and have borrowed 600 million from Elliott with an interest rate of 15 pct?
Thats why Elliott chose the lesser offer from Redbird.
There will be no big money signings at Milan this summer. Football Italia do your job.
@juve I think you’re citing a second hand Italian tabloid quote there; I saw that earlier too. The FT, Bloomberg, all the papers that look at financials, made no mention of this. That’s technically a leveraged buyout and people tend to report those after the united fiasco.
Hmmm….but who is going to spend $200m of their dollars buying players in June, July and August if the takeover is not completed till September? Answer = Nobody.