AC Milan are prepared to bide their time before appointing a new chief executive as they look to steal Ivan Gazidis away from Arsenal.
The Italian giants have made an approach for Gazidis that Arsenal are desperate to fend off, particularly after the Gunners chief executive led an ambitious restructuring of the Emirates hierarchy that culminated with Arsene Wenger’s departure and the appointment of Unai Emery.
However Gazidis could command an increase on his £1.7million salary were he to move to the San Siro, where he is highly regarding by Gordon Singer, whose father Paul founded Elliot Management, the new owners of Milan.
The Rossoneri have been similarly proactive in the overhaul of their own backroom since Elliott took the indebted club from Yonhong Li and, speaking at the unveiling of Milan legend Paolo Maldini as their director of strategic development, chairman Paolo Scaroni said he would wait for the right candidate to come along.
We will talk about the CEO after I return from holidays. I will not be putting any deadlines on this choice,” Scaroni said.
“It is a very important choice. We need to consider all options.”
Though Scaroni said he would not be willing to cover the chief executive role in addition to his duties as chairman for much longer his comments offer a clear indication that Milan would be prepared to wait if it means getting Gazidis.
Gazidis was born in Johannesburg, and moved to Manchester in the United Kingdom at the age of 4 and attended Manchester Grammar School, where he excelled as a football player, and was also a gifted drummer playing in at least two school-based rock bands. Being an adopted Mancunian from a young age, he supported Manchester City.
Later he attended St Edmund Hall at the University of Oxford, where he was twice awarded a blue playing football against the University of Cambridge in 1984 and 1985.[2][3]He graduated with a degree in law in 1986 and in 1992 he moved to the United States to work for Latham & Watkins.
In 1994, he joined the founding management team of Major League Soccer, becoming in 2001 its deputy commissioner. He oversaw MLS’s key strategic and business decisions and its marketing arm, Soccer United Marketing, of which he was president.He also helped promote the Mexican Football Federation and the CONCACAF Gold Cup.
In November 2008 Gazidis accepted the post of chief executive of Arsenal, a post he formally took up from 1 January 2009.[6] He succeeded former managing director Keith Edelman and was expected to take over many of the roles formerly undertaken by ex-vice-chairman David Dein.
In 2017–18, he oversaw significant personnel changes at the top of the club in preparation for then manager Arsene Wenger’s departure, which was announced in April 2018.
Majority shareholder Stan Kroenke is at the top of the heirarchy at the Emirates Stadium, but the restructure of the club’s operations have been carried out by Gazidis over the past year.
Gazidis has implemented nine new department chiefs with himself, head of recruitment Sven Mislintat and head of football relations Raul Sanllehi leading the day-to-day decision-making