Paolo Scaroni’s attack on Paolo Maldini was an unexpected attack, full of venom: “In these cases it means that someone is not living the present very well.” The response from the former Milan captain arrived immediately. Here’s what’s behind it.
That of Paolo Scaroni it was an unexpected attack, which comes when the name of Paolo Maldini it has been hidden under wraps for months, except to emerge occasionally along with rumors of alleged Arab investors ready to take over Milaninvestors for whom the former Rossoneri captain and manager would be a bridgehead. Very harsh words pronounced by the president of the Devil yesterday from the stage of “Il Foglio a San Siro”: “Maldini? I never heard from him again. I think that when someone looks at their past with a certain degree of acrimony, it means that they are not living the present very well. I hope this is not the case with Maldini, to whom I wish every satisfaction“.
Paolo Scaroni has been president of Milan since 2018
The response from the 55-year-old pillar of the great Milan arrived shortly after, a phrase that exudes serenity and the desire not to be dragged into a feud: “If I look at my past, I can’t stop smiling“, he told Corriere della Sera. After all, Maldini had sprayed all the poisons in his torrential interview with Repubblica last December, in which he removed boulders from his shoe.
And it is precisely to that interview that Scaroni most likely referred when sending his dig at the former captain, with whom he shared five years in the Rossoneri management, from 2018 – when Milan changed hands from the elusive Chinese entrepreneur Yonghong Li to Paul Singer’s Elliott fund – to 2023, when Maldini, director of the technical area, was eliminated without much congratulations from the new ownership together with sporting director Ricky Massara. At that juncture, after a year of coexistence, irreconcilable differences regarding the management of the club with the RedBird fund came to a head: number one Gerry Cardinale fired Maldini and Massara, just a year after winning the scudetto in 2022 after 11 years of fasting.
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Paolo Maldini and Ricky Massara, both fired by Milan in June 2023
Why Scaroni attacked Maldini: the poisonous interview
But what did Paolo Maldini say in the interview last December? Certainly not sweet words towards his former adventure companions in the management of Milan, but in particular there had been a lot of venom towards Paolo Scaroniwho for his part had previously declared that without Maldini the working group in the Rossoneri club was more united: “Milan deserves a president who only looks after Milan’s interests – the former captain replied – together with a management team that never leaves the team alone. In these years I have never perceived a clear sharing of what teamwork means: he never asked me if there was a need for a few words of encouragement to the players and our working group, in public or private. Never have I received support in the many difficult moments“.
Then Maldini came down even harder on Scaroni: “In the stands I often saw him leave when the opponents equalized or took the lead, perhaps just to avoid encountering traffic. While I remember him very punctually in the front row, when we won the scudetto: this is why I don’t know what was meant by the expression ‘group united without me’. But it is clear that I have a different concept of sharing and groups“.
