It has now been almost two weeks since 25 May, the date on which Gerry Cardinale carried out a complete overhaul — or rather, a total wipeout — of the club’s top brass. Since then, AC Milan finds itself in a situation unprecedented in its recent history: no chief executive, no technical director, no sporting director, no head coach. A power vacuum that inevitably affects everything: from season planning to the transfer market, right down to the day-to-day running of the dressing room.
A ship without a captain
Comparing AC Milan to a company without a management team helps to understand just how serious things are. No business can plan its future without an operational board, and a football club — which needs to sign players, negotiate contracts, define tactical strategies and communicate externally — is no different. Yet, as various sources report, RedBird continues to send reassurances about the desire to choose the right figures, without providing any indication of a timeline.
Meanwhile, time is ticking: it is already 6 June and the summer transfer window has, in practical terms, already opened. Other clubs are moving, negotiating, closing deals. AC Milan, on the other hand, is at a standstill.
Players in limbo: the Leao case
The most immediate risk concerns the players themselves. Without a management structure in place, who is supposed to talk to them? Who should reassure them or convince them to stay? The most glaring example is Rafael Leao: the Portuguese forward has publicly stated, in two separate television interviews in Portugal, that he wants to leave AC Milan, saying he feels worn down by the experience of recent years. Leao wants to leave AC Milan with the Premier League as his dream destination — a declaration that, in a club with an active management, would have already triggered a concrete response. Here, instead, in complete silence, his market value risks declining further.
The Portuguese number ten is not the only potential departure. Other names linked to the Rossoneri world — such as Adrien Rabiot — remain in a grey area, waiting to understand which direction the club will take. Without a coach to define a footballing identity and without a sporting director to handle negotiations, every transfer operation is effectively frozen.
The fixture list doesn’t help: a tough start awaits
The urgency of resolving the situation is compounded by the Serie A calendar. AC Milan will begin the season with a far from straightforward schedule: Torino, Venezia, Juventus and Lazio in the first four matchdays, with three away games and just one home fixture. A start that will require a settled squad and a head coach already in command of his group.
If the new manager — who, according to reports, could be a foreign profile and therefore less familiar with the specifics of Italian football — were to arrive well into July, the time to prepare the squad would be extremely limited. And those opening fixtures could prove very costly.
The hope: AC Milan knows how to rise again
Despite the difficult moment, AC Milan’s history speaks for itself: this is a club that knows how to reinvent itself, that has swept up the wreckage and built winning cycles. The hope — shared by fans, insiders and observers alike — is that in the coming weeks the new management structure and technical leadership will finally be defined, allowing AC Milan to move forward with momentum and a clear project. The club has already changed its tone on the timeline, but the hope is that this pause for reflection will soon translate into bold and winning decisions.
The market is waiting, the players are waiting, the fans are waiting. AC Milan has everything it takes to be great again — it just needs someone to take the wheel, and soon.
