Giorgio Furlani leaves AC Milan: RedBird resets the entire executive and sporting leadership — and the Rossoneri governance puzzle

According to Goal.com, Italian company records have officially confirmed that former chief executive Giorgio Furlani has left AC Milan. There was no farewell press conference, no emotional letter of thanks. Only a dry update in the official system and a joint statement from RedBird Capital, the US investment fund that controls the Rossoneri. The message is clear: the reset has begun, and it is much bigger than a simple CEO change. According to the company register, Furlani is not the only one leaving. RedBird has carried out a comprehensive restructuring of the sporting and executive areas. The sporting director, recruitment staff and operational departments are either being replaced or placed under a new management layer. In other words, this is not an individual decision, but a top-to-bottom reorganisation. To understand why this matters, we need to go back to when RedBird took over AC Milan from Elliott Management in 2026. The deal was valued at around €1.2 billion. At the time, RedBird promised to maintain competitiveness, grow the global brand and build a sustainable financial model. In the first season under the new ownership, AC Milan won their 19th Scudetto, but that was largely the result of the previous ownership's plans. When results began to decline, pressure mounted on the executive team. The Serie A title did not return. In the Champions League, Milan repeatedly disappointed. High-profile signings did not deliver value. Data from several seasons shows that Milan's points ratio against top-five Serie A sides kept dropping, and the owners' patience was bound to run out. Giorgio Furlani was not a strange name. He was embedded in RedBird's power structure and became the face of the relationship between the fund and the club. As CEO, he handled finance, contract negotiations and commercial operations. But in modern football, a CEO is judged on two things: results on the pitch and financial reports. Last season, neither was convincing. I do not have detailed financial statements, and I do not need to say who was right or wrong. What matters is the new structure. The new board list shows that Gerry Cardinale, RedBird's founder, will be more directly involved. Several new directors have been appointed to replace the old governance layer. The message is clear: major decisions will no longer be fully delegated to hired executives. For those who follow Italian football, this kind of restructuring is familiar. Juventus have changed leaders mid-season; Inter have changed chairmen. But the timing here is different. Mid-season, with the January transfer window approaching, a wholesale reset creates at least two consequences. First, contract renewal talks with key players may stall. Second, the coach's recruitment plans may be delayed because there is no one to approve them. Looking at Milan's transfer history under RedBird, a pattern emerges: deals were made quickly, focused on young players with resale potential. This model requires a highly alert recruitment machine. When that machine is dismantled, the first thing affected is not tactics but the data-gathering process. No data, no decisions. No decisions, no contracts signed. Based on my experience following matches and hundreds of European governance cases, I have noticed a rule: mass dismissals often create a power vacuum lasting six to eight weeks. During this period, important decisions are postponed, mid-level staff feel insecure, and partners push prices up. If Milan does not have a clear succession plan, the January window could become a mess. There is also the question of the relationship between the new management and the head coach. In Europe, changing a sporting director often increases the risk of changing the coach, because the coach was hired by the old regime. If the new leadership brings in their own people, tactics and squad structure could be disrupted. Players just signed to long contracts would become the hardest assets to move. Rossoneri fans are divided. Some think RedBird is right to clear out the old machine and start over. Others fear the US fund is turning San Siro into a governance laboratory, where decisions are based on spreadsheets rather than football passion. Media pressure will only grow if Milan slip up in the coming rounds. Fans may see this as a sign of crisis. But I think the opposite: RedBird's rapid consolidation of power, placing Cardinale on the board and removing the entire executive layer, suggests the fund wants more direct control — not withdrawal. A fund only resets so aggressively when it intends to stay long term and build foundations its own way. However, the downside of concentrated power is that there is no buffer. In the old model, the CEO and sporting director could shield the club from media pressure. Now every decision — spending, player sales, coach selection, substitutions — points to one source. If RedBird is wrong, they cannot blame subordinates. That demands enormous precision in every decision, as precise as a referee checking the rules before showing a card. This story reminds me of a lesson I learned after my 2026 mistake, when I confidently ruled on a situation based on old rules without checking updated data. The law is not in memory; it is in data. Football governance is the same. One match is just a story. Five hundred matches are the law. A shocking decision is not reckless if it is built on five hundred foundations. But if it is built on a whim, it will collapse faster than expected. What happens next? For AC Milan, the priority is internal stability. The new leadership must quickly identify who is responsible for sporting matters. It could be a newly appointed sporting director, or a coach given more power. If the process drags on, star players may start questioning their future. Losing a season to internal politics is a price no big club can afford. More broadly, Milan's reset reflects a trend in Europe: investment funds are becoming increasingly involved in operations rather than staying behind equity stakes. This can produce faster, more decisive actions, but it also makes clubs more fragile to the emotional swings of owners. Football is not the stock market. Football is accumulation, process, and things that cannot be changed by a single board meeting. So the most important question now is not why Furlani left. The important question is: does RedBird have enough patience to rebuild from the ruins, or will they reset again at the end of the season? The coming months will tell us. I will follow every file, every deal, every official statement. And I will only draw conclusions when the data is thick enough.