Filippo Galli has hit back at Paolo Maldini, insisting the Milan icon cannot pass judgement on Italian youth football “without having ever gone through, from the inside, the daily work that development requires.”
According to Gazzetta dello Sport, Galli used his blog, La Complessità del Calcio, to respond to Maldini’s recent Corriere della Sera interview, in which the former Milan and Italy captain argued Italian academies are too tactics-obsessed and hostile to individual talent, pointing to his own sons’ experiences in Milan’s youth ranks.
Galli, who ran Milan’s settore giovanile from 2009 to 2018, rejected the claim directly: “I was head of AC Milan’s youth sector from 2009 to 2018. Those comments, therefore, concern me directly.”
ITALY – DECEMBER 15: Filippo Galli, Roberto Donadoni, Alberico Evani and Giovanni Galli during the 125th Anniversary Show before the Serie A match between AC Milan and Genoa at Stadio Giuseppe Meazza on December 15, 2024. (Photo by Marco Luzzani/Getty Images)
Galli: Milan’s youth project ‘never traded development for results’
Galli insisted technique cannot be taught in isolation from tactical understanding, and that Italy’s real shortfall lies elsewhere: “Italy’s technical problem isn’t the wall, if anything, it’s the courtyard,” he said, pointing to a lack of unsupervised street football rather than any excess of coaching.
He said the Rossoneri’s academy under his watch was built on attacking football that “never traded our idea of formative football for an immediate result,” with mistakes treated “as a stepping stone, not a fault.”
Galli also addressed Maldini’s reference to his son Daniel, revealing the midfielder was “technically speaking, a late developer” physically who was nonetheless given consistent game time over more advanced team-mates, and was among the protagonists when Milan’s Under-16s thrashed Roma in a final.
He closed with a pointed dig at Maldini’s lack of hands-on academy experience, adding he could not let pass “a description so far removed from what that work actually was.”