We can absolutely agree on that – but then Furlani and Moncada deserve the exact same credit for Theo, Leao, Maignan, Kjaer, Kalulu, Tomori, Zlatan, Giroud… right?
And with that, the benefit of doubt too – no?
Even if someone hates the last two mercati, we still got new corner stones like Pulisic and Reijnders. And promising newcomers like Fofana, Jimenez or Pavlovic – who I genuinely think will be massive, even if that’s not the mainstream opinion yet. Maybe even Gimenez if we're patient enough.
I’m not a fan of this binary thinking where everything is either flawless genius or apocalyptic disaster. I do think the post-Maldini management created a fair bit of chaos to put it way more friendly than they deserve. And I’m not convinced they can steer this ship without serious internal changes.
But let’s not pretend Furlani and co. only showed up after the Scudetto party. Most of the same people who are now being blamed for the current mess were already in place when we won that title – people tend to forget that and only remember it to now attributing the Origi disaster also to Furlani.
So… when exactly do we draw the line?
Do you think Paratici deserves equal credit for what Juventus did while he was the deputy to Marotta at Juventus?
I imagine you would not.
Paratici made very different choices than Marotta when he took over Juventus, just like Maldini made very different choices than Leonardo, just like Moncada made different choices than Maldini.
I'm glad we have Reijnders and Pulisic--the rest of our transfers have largely been terrible.
This is not about binary thinking, it's about the simple fact that by being in 9th place that lays bare the incompetence of Furlani and Moncada in their current positions. That's the line.
Furlani, who unlike Gazidis, does not have experience in the role he occupies has overseen and reinforced an incoherent management structure that does not even have defined roles--a system implemented by our current owner--which has led to sporting disaster for this club. Moncada, Furlani, etc unlike the previous regime, they began their stewardship from a place of financial stability and sporting strength. When we were in 2nd last year, there were no calls to see "both sides" of the argument--it was victory laps all around.
Furlani might be better suited to a Gandini-type role than a Galliani-type one, and Moncada might be the greatest scout to ever live--even if we're still waiting for this legion of talent to appear that he was thwarted from buying before (Jimenez looks good)--but Moncada has done an objectively worse job than his predecessor.
How can I say "objectively," you may ask? Because we're in 9th.
When Milan was really strong in the 2000's, we had Galliani, Braida, Leonardo, Gandini, and other, less famous figures like Cantamessa--but soon we had less and less as we got to 2010. Leonardo left (before that), then Braida (in 2013), and soon Galliani was taking on roles he wasn't suited for--and we know how that went.
If you want to give Furlani and Moncada credit, fine, but it's very obvious that they're not suited to their current roles, because, again, we see it on the field.
The fact that Maldini got Origi and it failed doesn't negate the significant difference in quality between his body-of-work and his successors. Massara also deserves more praise than he has gotten in these discussions, it has to be said. I also think Boban deserves
much more credit for his work, and I think Gazidis really hurt Milan long-term by pushing Boban out of the club--the fact he won his wrongful termination lawsuit shows that Gazidis, contrary to public opinion, was wrong in that situation.
The thing is: Maldini's failures predate the mythical "year of independence" he had--I'll leave the irony of restricting his evaluation to a single year whilst Moncada has gotten multiple years aside--Maldini took gambles, like Mandzukic, which just didn't work. Bakayoko was a gamble that didn't work either. How about Duarte? Was selling Paqueta a mistake or should we he have kept him? FBT?
This attempt to create "ledgers" of mistakes whilst ignoring sporting results is weird to me. Marotta, who is being lauded here, has
plenty of mistakes, where his financial choices on players were a big part of why Inter defaulted to Oaktree. Maldini did something that Marotta, so far, has not shown capable of doing: he severly cut wages whilst increasing performance. That's really hard to do.
To me, Furlani is a Gandini and Moncada should be a Leonardo, Galliani and Braida don't lineup easily with our modern notions of TD, SD, and CEO, but I think you understand my point. They can be assets, but they have shown to have done a very poor job now that they have taken over.
The fact we are 9th is a disaster. It's a comical disaster. Bringing that up is not about extremes or about lack-of-nuance, it is the result of the choices this ownership has made. If Tare or Paratici or D'Amico come in, and turn the ship around, I'm not going to deny that because I have some sort of partisan position. It's why I look at what Redbird have done with the stadium, so far, as impressive. The people they have hired and the strategy on the stadium, so far, stands in stark contrast to how Redbird has handled their sporting decisions.
Saying that our previous leaders were better than our current ones is not about some binary, partisan issue--nor does it argue that the previous regime was faultless--it's the stark reality in front of us that you are asking us to tip-toe around, when it is the nail in the coffin to a rubric for success when Maldini's firing was justified: we're supposed to have a ruthless, corporate American structure. That means Furlani should be gone, Moncada should be gone, everyone should be gone--but that's not what is going to happen because the owner is the one who made these choices, and unless someone buys the club from him, he's the one who decided to fire Maldini and Massara and install this disjointed mess where Ibra gets to argue with Boban on Italian television saying "I'm the boss."
So, yeah, just because there were people who were in place before, doesn't mean that much. They have been put into roles they are not suited for and our club's failures point that out, clearly.
