Looks to me like this was all planned. It would have been impossible to fire him had we made the final of the CL, but losing to Inter and scraping into the CL through a backdoor was enough of an excuse to justify making such a monumental decision. But this was clearly the plan all along and they were waiting a whole year to pull the trigger. Monaco got denied Moncada months ago, and he could have gone to PSG with Campos. He stayed quiet and didn't renew. Why wouldn't he renew if he was rejecting these offers? He most likely had assurances that he will take over this summer, which means he already had a plan in place for targets to go after when that happens in order to hit the ground running.
We have the core group signed on to 2026 at least. Extending Maignan now is a lot harder and we'll need to show major assurances with a huge market and improved performances to convince him to extend, but we're lucky Maldini got Leao and the rest over the line and locked in for at least another 3 or 4 years.
There's already a clear-out planned for this summer. Most of the squad players are heading out. It's a mini-squad revolution that needs 6 or 7 new players in just to round out the numbers. Besides Kamada and Sportiello I don't think we know any of the names that we're actually targeting. Most likely they will all be huge surprises and players hardly any of us have heard of, which is sort of the point of what we will now be doing. It's a massive risk where we are betting everything on believing that we are smarter than everyone else. No more gut feeling, or looking for experience or whatever. They'll slice up our game into metrics and targets and spit out a list of names that the algorithm thinks will improve our expected points next season. The scouting team under Moncada will have a list, and the analytics team under Zelus will have a list, and whichever players are on both lists are the ones we send the faxes to. It's the same process we've been successfully using but probably without gut moves like Origi and Florenzi.
The x factor for me now is Pioli. If he wasn't using CDK, Adli or Vranckx (who were clearly greenlit by the data and scouting team) then what makes us assured that he'll use the next batch of youngsters? I really think Pioli is on borrowed time right now. They'll replace him (with RDZ hopefully) at the first wobble. That is unless he completely changes his process into one that is aimed at developing talent as opposed to winning at all costs. Moncada has said this in the past, how it's ok in France for teams to play youngsters because they expect them to make mistakes. If Pioli was asked to do the same, to be more forgiving of youthful mistakes, then i'm sure he can adapt. He's the ultimate yes man he won't argue against it. We might even see him integrate Adli and Vranckx next season if that's the case.
That's my hope, at least. It's a lot riskier (in a sporting sense) than the plan I was hoping we'd follow, which is what Maldini wanted to do. Upgrade the squad with more guaranteed champions with the money we made so far. It's cheaper, though, and a lot less risky financially. I know that's always going to be the side RB fall on, and Maldini wanted there to be more risk financially and less sporting risk. That's the fault line that couldn't be bridged.
