The investigation into RedBird Capital, Milan’s owner fund: everything on Cardinale-Mendes, Maldini and Ibrahimovic

One key point centres on the relationship between Gerry Cardinale and Alec Scheiner, a former NFL executive and for a time the right-hand man of the AC Milan owner in the fund's sports investments, while also leading the controversial Toulouse project from 2020 onwards. In 2022, Gerry Cardinale bought AC Milan, the Serie A champions, for €1.2 billion and even clashed with Scheiner, who saw it as a disproportionate investment, especially given the huge vendor loan granted by the Elliott fund. A year later came the final break with Scheiner, who was pushing to place his own men on the board of the Rossoneri club: in the summer of 2023, the same one as the irreparable rift with Paolo Maldini, the split between Scheiner and Cardinale also came. According to Molina, however, Scheiner set up a new fund, Otro Capital, financed by €200 million directly from the pockets of RedBird/Cardinale.

Two central figures in RedBird's time at AC Milan, for profoundly different reasons, are Paolo Maldini and Zlatan Ibrahimovic. Molina reconstructs the rift between Cardinale and the former Rossoneri captain and director: the clash stemmed from Cardinale's desire to bring men from the world of finance into the sporting management structure, as Billy Beane, Mr Moneyball, is for example). Maldini is said to have dug his heels in throughout because he did not want men from the financial world making sporting decisions. Molina also underlines that Zlatan Ibrahimovic's position within RedBird is practically untouchable: to take on the role of senior advisor, the former Swedish player invested money in the fund, and that acts as a guarantee of keeping him in place, even if his role has not yet been clearly defined.

At the end of his investigation, Romain Molina also turns to Jorge Mendes, the Portuguese super-agent who played a key role in the Rossoneri's last summer, bringing Ruben Amorim to the dugout, despite Amorim being represented not by Mendes but by AS1 Sports, leading the negotiations for Ramos and Moreira worth 75 and 60 million, and also handling Leao's departure from the Milan club. According to Molina, Gerry Cardinale, with the typical attitude of the big sharks of the Wall Street finance world, dominant in their sector, end up like small fish in an ocean when they dive into the European football industry, which is why they rely on the big intermediaries and agents in the football world.