Ivan Gazidis points to Liverpool blueprint as AC Milan look to plot path back to the top
Milan beat Liverpool in the 2007 Champions League final but since then the clubs have taken very different paths
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Your support makes all the difference.AC Milan’s latest attempt to rebuild and restore a once-great club to the pinnacle of Italian and European football saw them appoint Ivan Gazidis as chief executive a little over a year ago.
After leaving Arsenal in late 2018 following a decade at the club, Gazidis moved to Milan to head up their plan for revival, with a fifth-place finish being their best Serie A season since 2013.
While success hasn’t been immediately forthcoming – Milan sit ninth this season after yet another head coach change – there is an acceptance from Gazidis that a plan must be put into place to allow gradual progression, rather than expecting instant results.
There is a clear blueprint to follow, too, with the growth and improvement shown by Premier League club Liverpool serving as an inspiration for the Italian giants.
“Liverpool spent nine years in a situation similar to ours,” Gazidis told Gazzetta dello Sport.
“When [Jurgen] Klopp arrived, he said he would make the sceptics believe; no one believed it at the beginning, not even the fans.
“Today, we can see what Liverpool are. Soon, you will see what Milan are.”
While the Reds never quite sank to the mid-table obscurity which the Rossoneri have had to put up with, ending 10th in 2014/15 and seventh in the seasons either side, their route back to the top started some time before Klopp even joined.
Under ownership group FSG, Liverpool won a League Cup with Kenny Dalglish in charge, then returned to the Champions League under Brendan Rodgers, before finally appointing Klopp in 2015 - who now looks set to end the club’s 30-year wait for a league title.
Liverpool have also reached successive Champions League finals, winning in 2019, perhaps serving as an even bigger inspiration for Milan’s regeneration following the two clubs’ meetings in finals in 2005 and 2007.
The Anfield club won the first in Istanbul, before Milan triumphed two years later in Athens. Over the last decade, though, Milan have won one Serie A title in 2011 as their only major honour.
Despite Liverpool’s own downturn in fortunes after 2010, they have since gone on to win the 2012 League Cup plus each of the Champions League, European Super Cup and the Club World Cup over the past nine months, with the domestic league title sure to follow in the coming weeks.
Much of their gains and improvements have been attributed to smarter recruitment work and good reinvestment after major sales, such as that of Philippe Coutinho, as well as the progressive steps forward taking on the coaching side of the club.
Milan, under the control of Gazidis, will look to replicate that work on and off the pitch perhaps, and reestablish their own position at the top of European football – just as Liverpool have already done.
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