How do you solve a problem like Milan? Part 3

Welcome to part three of my series of blogs about Milan’s current problems.

Now that we know what the problems are and who is causing these problems, it’s time to figure out how to fix them.

The first obvious solution is to put the club up for sale and let somebody new take over. Everybody appreciates what Berlusconi has done for the club over the past 25 years but his methods are outdated and it’s time for some fresh ideas. He does not want to spend any more money on the club and although they are not in as much debt as the other big clubs they cannot survive much longer on the limited resources Berlusconi is providing.

Once a new president has been appointed it’s time to trim the fat, so to speak, and bring in some new, young and talented players. What should have been done after the 2007 Champions League victory was to start to develop young players while the older ones were still capable of performing and have them mentor the younger generation so that when these champions get too old or start to tire then the new batch of players would have been able to use all they had learnt and they wouldn’t be so inexperienced.
But that didn’t happen. So the new owner would need to clear out players like Seedorf, Gattuso, Zambrotta, Bonera, Oddo, Jankulovski and Pirlo (while he is still worth a bit of money) and invest in some younger talent and develop players from the youth academy. Obviously this would take time which is why it would have been a smart thing to begin the operation three years ago.

Next would be to address the issue of the coach. After Ancelotti left, the youth director, Leonardo, was appointed with no coaching experience at all and it showed by the end of the season. At the moment the club has a coach that was at a team that finished in tenth positions last season and is also relatively inexperienced. These kinds of coaches do not have the capacity of coaching big name players or developing youth and are not tactically minded, which is an essential attribute in the Italian Serie A. If the management did its research they would know that former Milan player and Champions League winning coach Frank Rijkaard is available and in need of a club. Sure he might cost a little more than a coach that is just starting out but the benefits in the long run will be worth it.

I am sure I’m not the only one who has these solutions in mind and it is really annoying that every fan and football enthusiast can see the problems and know what needs to be done but the only people that can actually do something about it are blinded by their own egos and it’s the fan, players and the club as a whole that suffers because of it.