AC Milan Must Move on from Adriano Galliani to Kick-Start Rebuilding Process

Since Silvio Berlusconi purchased AC Milan in 1986, Adriano Galliani has been the face of the club. He has served with distinction as vice-president and transfer guru under Berlusconi, and he has racked up an impressive resume of transfer activity.

This is the man who brought the likes of Marco van Basten, Ruud Gullit, George Weah, Andriy Shevchenko and Kaka to the club.

His resume dwarfs that of almost any executive in football history. Under his watch, the Rossoneri have won five Champions League titles and eight of the 18 scudetti in the club's history, along with a Coppa Italia, six Supercoppas, five UEFA Super Cups and three trophies between the old Intercontinental Cup and its successor, the FIFA Club World Cup.

Even more impressive, Galliani has seen five players he acquired win the Ballon d'Or a total of seven times.

That shimmering CV makes it all the more incredible that Galliani has been the main culprit in Milan's shocking fall over the last five years.

Ever since Marina Berlusconi, Silvio's daughter and the chairperson of Milan's parent company, Fininvenst, slashed the club's budget in 2010, Galliani has produced a string of abject failures that have buried the club in mid-table—and they may not get out of it unless their long-time chief bows out.

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While Milan did manage to sweep up their most recent Scudetto the season after Marina turned off the tap—thanks in part to Galliani's swoop for the discontented then-Barcelona forward Zlatan Ibrahimovic—since then it has seen a steady decline.

The biggest reason for that decline—the lack of funds—was mostly out of Galliani's control.

As top players like Ibrahimovic and Thiago Silva were sold off in big deals to balance the books, it was the decisions Berlusconi's long-time lieutenant made that exacerbated an already-festering problem.

The first mistake came after Milan's championship season of 2010-11, Galliani deemed Andrea Pirlo to be at the end of his useful life. He let the legendary midfielder walk out of Milan on a free transfer—only to watch him have some of the best seasons of his career at Juventus, keying their run of four consecutive titles.

As time passed, Galliani repeatedly proved himself unable to do what Juve director Giuseppe Marotta was doing in Turin and build a genuine contender on a budget.

Marotta focused on finding young players like Paul Pogba and Arturo Vidal and augmenting them with inexpensive—or free—veterans like Pirlo, Andrea Barzagli and Fernando Llorente. Throw in the occasional low-risk, high reward signing like that of Carlos Tevez, and the Juve juggernaut was born.

Galliani didn't do any of that. When he did spend money, it tended to be in large chunks on players like Mario Balotelli, who were promising but carried a lot of risk at their price tag.

These gambles didn't pay off. For instance, Balotelli was sold in a year and a half in a move that actually represented a slight loss.

But probably the most unforgivable of all Galliani's sins was his suffocation of Milan's youth system.

As the money got shorter and the results got poorer, Galliani repeatedly signed older players who ran the spectrum from on the downside of their career to washed up in an attempt to put a finger in the dike.

The likes of Sulley Muntari, Michael Essien, Keisuke Honda and even Kaka blocked what could have been the next great generation of Milan players from developing.

Of special note was a pair of promising young midfielders: Bryan Cristante, a youth product, and Riccardo Saponara, signed as a 21-year-old from Empoli in the winter of 2014.

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When the two found the field, they turned in some of the best single-game performances the of the season. But Cristante only ever saw meaningful minutes in three games—in which he scored a goal and notched an assist—during the 2013-14 season. Saponara saw the field eight times in a year and a half—only three from the start.

Instead of moving these young gems into more important roles to allow them to grow, Galliani moved them out the door.

Cristante was sold to Benfica in the summer of 2014 for a mere €6 million (£4.4 million). Saponara was sent back to Empoli on loan in January—a deal that inexplicably included a €4 million (£2.9 million) option to buy, which Empoli duly exercised after the youngster racked up seven goals and three assists in the second half of the year.

The shambles that currently passes for a midfield at Milan is the result of these tremendous errors. Headlining that mess is Andrea Bertolacci, who is rapidly on his way to becoming a €20 million (£14.8 million) flop and the latest of Galliani's signings to blow up in his face.

This summer, the man who has crafted two European dynasties reached his nadir. Now adding to mistakes is sheer impotence.

Galliani thought he had both Jackson Martinez and Geoffrey Kondogbia signed this window. Martinez's agent told Marca (h/t Football Italia) that his client would be going to Milan, only for the move to break down days later. The Colombian ended up at Atletico Madrid.

The Kondogbia situation was worse. Not only did he turn down Milan, he ended up at their hated rival, Inter. He even took less money to do so, according to FCInter1908 (h/t Football Italia).

These high-profile failures were compensated for by the aforementioned Bertolacci, a big miss, and by Carlos Bacca, a comparable signing that does, in fairness, deserve some praise. But they were also endemic of a wider problem.

They were the biggest signal yet that Galliani is not the force in the negotiating room he once was—and perhaps more importantly that players don't think he has a viable plan.

Galliani bears more responsibility for Milan's current situation than almost anyone else. He's shown no ability to make up for those mistakes. Indeed, if the business he's conducted over the last few years has said anything, it's that the game is passing him by.

If Milan wants to move forward, the team's leadership needs to change. Galliani must go.