Why did AC Milan fall apart?

AC Milan has been the victim of the very same revolution that its owner, Mr Berlusconi, ignited 30 years ago: the attitude of pouring an irrationally enormous amount of money on the football teams in order to obtain enormous visibility at home and abroad (and hopefully victories too).

Unfortunately for Mr Berlusconi, his fortunes have been dwindling due to his (and his companies) problems with Justice in Italy and abroad and the persistent economy crash of his home country, which he formidably contributed to generate by being his PM for approximately the last 15 years.

Time has passed: now the Sheiks from the middle east and the Russian Oligarchs set the price for the most talented players and this price, most of the times, cannot be even remotely afforded by Berlusconi anymore.

This lack of resources would require a new approach to the squad building: growing up young new talents in-house, hiring promising but undervalued players, supporting a Manager during good and bad times, etc. Unfortunately for AcMilan, no new approach is to be found at: quite the opposite.

Mr. Berlusconi’s inability to cope with the changing times in a new way is now legendary: he is a stubborn victim of the nostalgia of the good old times (for this reasons he hired – and subsequently sacked – both Seedorf and Inzaghi). Mihailovic has not even been able to complete his first season and has been already replaced by Brocchi (with zero coach experience in Serie A) with only 6 games of the season 2015-2016 season left.

As we know, Mr Berlusconi is also tied to Mr Galliani – the co-Ceo of the team – who cannot be fired without paying him a golden parachute of more than 100m Euro (apparently Berlusconi offered him 100m Euro but he refused and was ready to sue his employer and his daughter for libel): another payment that the Milanese tycoon at present cannot afford.

The problems have been recently exacerbated when Mr Berlusconi had the smart idea to appoint his youngest daughter Barbara (!) as co-Ceo (she wanted to be a Ceo of something, like her two older siblings, apparently!).

She proved to be an arrogant & dilettante woman with no previous working experience whatsoever (she had the bright idea to start dating Alexandre Pato as soon as she took office and sacked Ac Milan’s former head of marketing so she could hire Mr Geronimo La Russa, another embarrassing individual who happen to be one of her best friends).

The idea to appoint her as co-Ceo of a team with a 200m Euro turnover has been a complete disaster: she dated a player, wanted to kick out Galliani the day she stepped in, she wanted to be the boss of Marketing with no experience, and then… her huge failure to execute the plans to build the new stadium is still regarded as a hugely expensive and embarrassing mistake by the Berlusconi family.

A faux pas like this would have been simply impossible 10 years ago: not only they will not build the long awaited new Stadium, but they are currently being sued by the owner of the Stadium’s construction site because AcMilan rescinded the contract right after having won it – ridiculous.