The president of Milan has made an epochal decision for the history of Milan, the market will also be influenced by it.
Gerry Cardinale became president of Milan on 31 August 2022, when the Red Bird company purchased the majority stake in Milan from the Elliot fund, which had obtained it in circumstances similar to the turnover between Oaktree and Steven Zhang.
Since that August, many things have changed at Milan: the American management believes a lot in the strategy of moneyballborrowed from American Baseball, consisting of searching for the best profiles on the market using an algorithm based on various filters.
It seems that this same algorithm is also the basis of the choice, which now seems definitive, to entrust the bench to Paolo Fonsecagiven that according to rumors released by The Athletic Dutch, the Portuguese coach was also in the running for the Liverpool bench, being among the first profiles indicated by the algorithm behind it Arne Slot.
Cardinale seems determined to take more and more control of the Club, applying a series of financial maneuvers to increase capitaland available: in particular he would be thinking of a strategy already applied by De Laurentiis in Naples.
Milan, Cardinal convinced by the Leao case: the situation
Last April, Milan published a capsule collection dedicated to their 10 Rafa Leao: the Portuguese had taken an active part in the design of t-shirts, sweatshirts and tracksuits and had been recognized as one percentage of sales.
The success of the capsule collection seems to have convinced Gerry Cardinale to make this type of collaboration structuralinserting an entry relating to the exploitation of image rights. Milan, like almost all clubs, always keeps commercial exploitation out of the athlete from the contracts that regulate the employment relationship with him.
This is due to the agreement stipulated in 1981 between the FIGC, the Leagues and the AIC which, in article 1, states: “Footballers are recognized as having the right to use their image in any lawful and decent form, even direct or indirect profit motiveprovided that it is not associated with the names, colours, shirts, symbols or insignia of the club to which it belongs or of other clubs of the National League or National League Serie C, and provided that it does not take place during official football activities”.
Image rights are usually retained by the athlete who uses them independently, with the exception of Napoli footballerswho by company policy transfer them to the company at the moment of signing the contract: an almost mandatory rule for De Laurentiis which has often led to contractual negotiations taking a very long time and, in some cases, failing.
