"Like Trump, he said: 'You are fired.' Everyone was sacked." Carlo Genta, host of Italian football podcast Tutti Convocati, didn't mince words — and honestly, the comparison holds up.
A day after Milan's 2-1 home loss to Cagliari confirmed their failure to finish in the top four, owner Gerry Cardinale wiped the slate clean. Coach Massimiliano Allegri, CEO Giorgio Furlani, sporting director Igli Tare, and technical director Geoffrey Moncada were all gone by Monday morning. Four key figures. One statement. No survivors.
The scope of this reset is hard to overstate
This isn't a mid-season tweak or a quiet departure in the off-season. Milan have now gutted their entire sporting and executive structure in one move. Genta called it cowboy management — "Cardinale is a Trump admirer, probably of John Wayne too" — and the imagery fits. Fast, blunt, no negotiations.
Whether that decisiveness translates into actual progress is a different question. This is described as possibly the deepest revolution at Milan in the last two years, which is saying something given the club has already cycled through multiple eras of leadership under Red Bird ownership. Each reset has promised direction. This one needs to deliver it.
Champions League football drives everything at a club Milan's size — revenue, recruitment, the ability to hold onto players who have options elsewhere. Missing out isn't just a sporting embarrassment. It reshapes the entire transfer window, and any new coach arriving will do so knowing the squad needs rebuilding in a tighter financial context.
Ibrahimovic back in the driving seat
The one constant through all of this is Zlatan Ibrahimovic, who remains as Red Bird's operating partner and senior advisor. Cardinale is reportedly leaning on him again to shape the next hire, which raises a fair question about accountability — if this is Zlatan's project too, the results so far don't reflect well on the advisory setup that was already in place.
Milan are now hunting a new coach and a new director of football simultaneously. Whether they can attract the right names without Champions League football next season is the first real test of Cardinale's ambitions matching his decisiveness.
