AC Milan just told the market they’re not buying a new sporting director. Not yet anyway. Instead of bringing in an outside executive to overhaul the front office, the club is promoting from within and handing more control to head coach Ruben Amorim. That’s according to Mediaset.
Amorim will have more influence than your typical Serie A manager. He’s already started working the phones. La Gazzetta dello Sport reports he called goalkeeper Mike Maignan and midfielder Adrien Rabiot directly to ask them to stick around. Both players had been linked with moves away. Amorim apparently convinced them to give the new project a shot.
The New Front Office Structure
The culling of Milan’s executive ranks earlier this year left a thin front office. Now the club is elevating the survivors. Hendrik Almstadt moves up to player trading director. He came from Arsenal, Aston Villa, and the PGA Tour. Bobby Gardiner becomes football intelligence director. Head scout Donato Lomonte will report to him. Both have been at Milan since 2019. On the business side, board member Massimo Calvelli takes over as permanent CEO with RedBird’s David Castelbianco assisting, per Repubblica.
It’s a lean setup. Owner Gerry Cardinale and Zlatan Ibrahimovic will be in the room for major decisions. That trio plus Amorim will essentially run the show. Some insiders wonder if that’s too many cooks. Then again, the previous structure had even more voices. This at least narrows who’s actually making calls.
Amorim’s Roster Plans
According to Fabrizio Romano (via SOSFanta), Amorim wants to hold onto midfielder Ardon Jashari and Yunus Musah. Both are young and fit his system. Ruben Loftus-Cheek, however, is on his way out. The English midfielder never fully settled and the new coach sees him as expendable.
The real test will be the summer window. Almstadt and Gardiner have to execute Amorim’s vision without a big-name director above them. It could work. It could also get messy if the owner and Ibrahimovic disagree with the coach. Those two haven’t exactly shown bulletproof judgment in recent years. Cardinale’s RedBird has made some aggressive calls. Ibrahimovic’s role as an adviser has been more vibes than results so far.
There’s chatter that this structure is temporary. Some reports suggest Milan might go after Markus Krosche from Eintracht Frankfurt next year. But that’s a bridge they’ll cross later. Right now the club is betting on its internal staff and a first-year coach with conviction. If Amorim proves to be the genius his reputation suggests, this could look smart. If not, the odds of things going sideways are real. Milan is gambling that less bureaucracy means faster decisions. We’ll see if they picked the right people to make them.
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