Milan offer reportedly tempting Arsenal executive Ivan Gazidis

It appears that AC Milan owners Elliott Management are still pursuing current Arsenal executive Ivan Gazidis to be president of Milan.

Milan are reportedly willing to pay Gazidis €3.9 million a year to run the club, which would be a significant upgrade to his current salary.

Gazidis has been hand-picked by Paul Singer, the head of Elliott Management, to run the day-to-day operations at Milan. Gazidis has been linked with a move to Italy and Milan earlier in the summer, soon after the hedge fund’s takeover of Milan took place, but it seemed that Milan would have to go in another direction.

When the current president, Paolo Scaroni, took over, it was announced then that he was merely a place holder for the eventual president, and that Elliott Management had already identified their target and were working on bringing him to the club to run the operations.

It now seems that the target that Singer had in mind was Gazidis, who Singer has known for several years. Gazidis has been at Arsenal since 2008, and before that Gazidis was one of executives responsible for the growth and success of Major League Soccer in the United States, and was president of Soccer United Marketing, the marketing arm of MLS and USSF that has been extremely profitable for the owners of MLS and USSF.

Gazidis is usually regarded as one of the better executives in the Premier League, but he could be tempted with an increase in pay and a chance to shed the strict budget constraints of Arsenal in order to bring Milan back to its rightful place of glory on top of Serie A and Europe.

Will Gazidis trade London for Milan and the red of Arsenal for the Rossonero of Milan? It’s not a given, although at Arsenal, it’s expected that Gazidis will go to Milan.