Mazzara: Milan must ‘attack’ the summer amid Inter’s financial and ownership crisis | OneFootball

An opportunity may well have presented itself for AC Milan to ‘attack’ the summer and bridge the gap to Inter very quickly, given their financial turmoil.

Oaktree are very close to enforcing their pledge and taking control of Inter as per multiple reports, because Steven Zhang and Suning need to pay circa €395m by the end of tomorrow and they are having real difficulties.

Zhang used Inter as collateral for an initial €275m loan back in May 2021 and it was agreed as part of that financing that Oaktree would take control of the club should the debt not be repaid by the end of Tuesday.

It is not too dissimilar to what happened with Elliott Management and Yonghong Li, and it is something that seems very likely at this stage given how long Zhang has had and the lack of time available.

Pietro Mazzara spoke in his latest column for MilanNews about the economic struggles of Milan’s cousins from across the Navigli and why the management might be looking at it as an opportunity.

“What bad guys at Oaktree! How wicked they are to want the money they loaned to Inter three years ago back. Since the end of February, listening to the voices outside the Marottiano megaphone, there has been talk of Zhang’s real difficulties in repaying the 375 million debt he has (for 24 hours yet) with the American fund,” he said.

“Yet those were the days in which the contents of the phone call between Zhang himself and Gerry Cardinale were mystified, making the AC Milan owner seem like a sort of starving man over the stadium issue. There was much more to the content of that phone call. Much more.

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“Now everyone has opened their eyes, even the trumpeters most loyal to the cause, because facts – when money is involved – sooner or later lead to the truth. Ah, Lautaro wants 12 million in salary, since he sat down to discuss. Just saying.

“Milan, now, must understand at all levels that this is the moment to act in a certain way, to take a certain position and to ‘attack’ those situations in which the others have been better at doing so.

“The mercato will be important, as will the choice of the coach. But it will be even more important to change a mental area where one cannot think that football, especially Italian football, is the world of American sports.”