Gerry Cardinale is now the one man really running Milan. The American era at the club goes back a little further, though. In July 2018 Paul Singer’s Elliott fund took over Milan from Yonghong Li’s disastrous Chinese ownership.

Four years of gradual growth followed, ending with the Scudetto (Pioli on the bench and Ibrahimović still playing, Maignan, Theo, Tonali and Leão on the pitch, Maldini and Massara in the Directors’ box), and in the summer of 2022 the club changed hands again, with American buyers once more.

On 31 August RedBird Capital Partners completed its takeover in a deal worth around €1.2 billion. The group arrived with big ambitions and as one of the most established names in world sport: being part of the New York Yankees orbit says plenty about the appeal and the clout it brings. But football is a different business, and Cardinale’s first four years at Milan have been far from smooth sailing. There was a Supercoppa and a Champions League semi-final, but also two seasons in a row without Champions League football, plus a series of changes at management level that held back the growth plan RedBird had drawn up, with Ibrahimović’s influence as super-consultant hanging over everything.

Things changed last summer. Once the disappointment of finishing fifth had been dealt with, the whole sporting department was overhauled from top to bottom (only Ibra is still involved, albeit from a distance), and Cardinale took personal charge of the club in a way he never had before.

THE CARDINALE TURNING POINT

He has been around far more often and has made every call himself, not just the big ones, starting with the decision to go all in on Ruben Amorim as head coach, with Jorge Mendes playing a key part in the transfer market.

Milan has outspent every other Italian club, with more than €160 million invested, even if performances on the pitch have been inconsistent. The next step is the one that should mark a fresh start: the appointment of Markus Krösche as Head of Football. He will work closely with Amorim and will have the final say on football matters, answering only to Cardinale.

The German has already left Eintracht Frankfurt and will start in January. Cardinale’s Milan cannot afford to waste any more time, and in the meantime the club, together with city rivals Inter, has finally found a way to move forward with the new stadium. The Generali Stadium has now been presented: it will be home to both clubs from the 2031-32 season and is expected to bring in much more money than San Siro does today, beginning with a main sponsorship deal worth over €300 million over twenty years. “I’ll be here for a long time, and I want to be, and always will want to be, active in every transfer window, trying to take advantage of every opportunity that comes along. As I’ve said before and keep saying publicly, when I took ownership of this club in June 2022, my aim was to bring it back to the top of Italian and European football. We’re doing our best,” the Milan owner said a few days ago.

He has spent four years studying, understanding and, at times, getting it wrong. Now Cardinale is more determined than ever to make sure Milan is really his Milan.