Milan, the flop of the sports area and the disappointment of cardinal: also Ibra under judgment

“Cardinal gives you space to be yourself, in return he wants results,” said Zlatan Ibrahimovic on the eve of the playoff against Feyenoord. The results: Milan eighth in the championship and outside the Europe area. Eliminated by the modest Dutch in the Champions League. Beaten by Bologna in a final of the Italian Cup almost without history. Winner of the Italian Super Cup of Arabia, a tournament that offers the possibility of raising the first trophy of the year between one commercial catwalk and the other. The sports season of Milan, according to the same in Furlani, was bankrupt. All responsible, even more so, those who deal with technical choices and market. The Moncada DT, which follows the online lessons of the Unisalento to put itself in compliance with the license as a sports director, and the super consultant Ibrahimovic.

The flop of the Milan sports area

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The results have been said. The technical choices that conditioned them were the preference granted in the summer to Paulo Fonseca, the first coach of the season and exonerated at the end of December. Then the change of course on Conceiçao, the Portuguese count, who had made an incredibly solid team of the port, always on the field at very high intensity. The and Leao were unlikely to keep the same rhythms. For Moncada and Ibra a double flop. Here we are at the repair market in which the 28.5 million (plus bonuses) spent for Gimenez stand out. Then Joao Felix on loan from Chelsea and Walker from the City, Bondo with a relegation Monza. January was a period of particular exposure especially for Zlatan, at the Banco delle Official presentations with Saints (“A killer of the penalty area”) then with Felix (“A magical player”). Nobody more than Ibra should guess the talent of the attackers: Gimenez has closed the reserve season, Felix has not gone beyond the lob in the Italian Cup. And if Moncada can claim the purchases of Reijnders and Pulisic, the best markers of the season, Ibra does not have a particularly happy choice to defend. Cardinal, who two evenings, when Milan took the field at the Olimpico was in Qatar on business, had crowned him last February: “Having Ibrahimovic allows me to be in Milan also from the USA, it is my ‘substitute’ in the city. He has the authority to be my voice by talking to staff and players, he has a credibility that no one else would have had. He speaks for me”. An authority that Zlatan actually had as a footballer but who is less marked as a manager. Also about Gimenez: in a video of the ceremony at the Quirinale you can see Zlatan tending his hand to tighten it, saints who reciprocates with a fast five and leaves. With Theo and Rafa, his former locker room companions, he did not go better: they spent a season without particular bothers, with few tears and many more games in a slow trend. Ibra’s conviction work did not make himself heard.

The disappointment of cardinal

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Zlatan has been Senior Advisor for Milan’s property and senior management since December 2023. A role that includes collaboration “with the global Redbird investment team to support the company’s investment portfolio in Sport, Media and Entertainment sectors”. Cardinal would have gladly exploited Ibra’s global sequel as a testimonial, but today it is enough to scroll through the social comments under the Zlatan advertising campaigns to understand the feeling of the fans. Ibra is no longer far from criticism, quite the contrary. Even at an extra football level, the intake of the former champion was modest. But the real disappointment arrives on the field, where Ibra has not been able to affect how it did in the past as a center forward. On the contrary, there are a series of missed goals and wrong movements that have ended up conditioning, this time in the negative, the Milan season. Inevitable that Cardinal is disappointed and that the club’s sports area comes out of it. The novelty is that this time Ibra is also postponed. Maldini and Massara paid with the workplace, this time the opposite will happen: no dismissal, but a new DS will arrange things.