The issue won’t be where the coach comes from, rather whether that coach is given the time and resources to build a project. Football is no longer just about spending exhorbitant amounts in the market, managers have proven you can do well and even win when with better ideas if given backing. Cesc proved it in Serie A, Arteta in the Premier League, countless other “system coaches” have won with less than the big spenders in the league- with less than we’ve spent.
Iraola, can work, if given time and backing. When the announcement came through that it was Allegri who was to be our next manager I was so dismayed… we had finished 8th, had no European football, and yet we went with the least imaginative coach available. Someone who would build NOTHING for which we could either enjoy watching or would lead somewhere in the future. It was such a shortsighted, knee jerk, cowardly decision. Now we’re back to where we started. Worse off than when Maldini and Massara left. The tore down everything that was working and have built nothing worth replacing it. Now is the time to finally have some balls AND some patience. The patience that wasn’t shown to Fonseca. The balls that were nowhere to be seen when they hired the dinosaur Allegri.
I hope we go for Farioli. He’s done well everywhere he’s been so far. Turkey. France. Holland. Portugal. He’s Italian. Young. Speaks great English and a native Italian speaker. Great defensive record, plenty of possession, progressive tactical vision… It makes too much sense.
Absolutely this.
Find a coach you want to build around long-term. Then align everything behind that idea, from the CEO down to the sporting director. I hope that's the lesson Gerry finally took from the last two years, because firing Furlani, Moncada, Tare and Allegri in one go suggests he at least understood that the problem was the lack of harmony between all of them (and Allegris football leading to absolutely fucking nowhere). The more cynical read is that he's scapegoating everyone but himself and his best pal Zlatan. Both things can be true TBF.
I've been pushing for Gasperini because he's the name that comes to mind most naturally when I think of a modern coach with a genuine track record of developing players rather than making them regress. Allegri did the latter everywhere he went in the last decade. In the closed briefing with GdS and a few other outlets, Cardinale and Zlatan said they want "a coach à la Fabregas", which in principle points in a similar direction and gives me a cautious sliver of hope that they've actually internalised the idea.
Because Como is the blueprint and people are still getting it wrong. Everyone's staring at net spend figures on Transfermarkt acting like Como bought their way into CL in just their second season back in Serie A. That's not what happened. Como have been
exceptional at identifying talents who fit
Fabregas's idea and then letting him develop them.
Let's look at some glaring examples:
- Nico Paz, "paid loan" from RM when his MV was 10M, current MV: 65M
- Jacobo Ramon, "paid loan" from RM when his MV was 1M, current MV: 25M
- Da Cunha, bought for 750K from Nizza, current MV: 20M
- Diao, boght for 12M from Sevilla, current MV: 30M
- Perrone, bought for 13M from ManCity, current MV: 30M
- Addai, bought for 14M from Alkmaar, current MV: 20M (could've been higher without the injury)
- Douvikas, bought for 14M from Celta Vigo, 2nd best goal scorer in Serie A, current MV: 18M
- Baturina, bought for 18M from Zagreb, current MV: 30M
- Jesus Rodriguez, their most expensive player in their club history, bought for 22,5M from Sevilla, current MV: 30M
That's how you build a CL club in modern Serie A. No overpriced superstars. No aging players sold to you on the basis of "experience", which is the BS Italian media peddles so they can keep recycling the same coaches, directors and habits on a loop.
Speaking of which. I listened to Pellegatti's podcast with Seb Sabatini and Pellegatti was practically offended: "They don't want Italians! I don't like it!" This from one of the men most responsible for cheerleading the exact backwards thinking that got Italian football into its current miserable state. Never change. Never try anything new. And if you do try once and it fails, use that one failure as permanent proof that change itself is the problem, while conveniently ignoring the twenty times the old approach failed too. Sound familiar? Fonseca and Conceicao as a failed experiment. The butchered 4-3-3 against Udinese as proof that attacking football doesn't work. The inevitable conclusion: bring back Allegri. Bring back 3-5-2. And so forth...
Here's the thing though. When Gerry fired Maldini, the instinct behind it wasn't necessarily wrong. You can make a genuine case that Italian football's inner circle is hopelessly outdated and that coming in from outside with a different vision was the right call in principle.
Sure, maybe don't fire
Maldini of all people to begin with, because he embodies Milan in a way nobody else does. He's the bridge between the cold pragmatism of foreign ownership and the nostalgic passion of the fanbase, and he's still forward-thinking enough compared to the old guard of Serie A's inner jerk circle. I guess firing Maldini was more about ego. Gerry doesn't like egos. Which begs the question why he keeps Zlatan around. Ah, what do I know.
But even granting all of that, coming in and saying "this is cool but also hopelessly outdated and we want to do something different" is not a wrong intuition I think. The wrong intuition was entrusting that "new" to a pure numbers guy nobody likes like Furlani, Moncada and Zlatan, none of whom were remotely equipped to execute it. And the moment it blew up spectacularly, the panic response was to reach for the most familiar safety blanket available. Allegri. Which made everything worse.
Como did something new for Serie A standards too and didn't look backwards once. No Italian coaches, no Italian directors or managers, barely any Italian players, they committed all the sins the press accused Milan for, and look where they are. If Gerry is genuinely trying to build something along those lines (and I hope Calvelli is watching well over Zlatan), he has my full support, even if it takes two or three years to get back into the CL. What matters most right now is that we start this summer with the right people at the wheel, people who share the same vision, pull in the same direction and actually understand what modern football requires.
