Can AC Milan end Juventus' hegemony after acquiring Leonardo Bonucci?

In a shock move, Juventus stalwart Leonardo Bonucci agreed to join Serie A rivals AC Milan last week. Will his transfer signal a shift in the balance of power in Italian football with a splurging Milan seeking to reestablish itself at the top?

Everything in football is ephemeral – the beautiful game is transient by its very 90-minute nature. When the final whistle rings, the past is oft forgotten and the future beckons unforgivingly as the carousel of the global game meanders, through and past mini-soap operas and overblown story lines, to the next encounter of modern-day gladiators.

Yet, there are those who defy logic, mainstays in the game, marked by their club love. They are a rare breed in a cosmos infested by shark-like agents where nebulous mega-transfers and obscene salaries are the norm. Alessandro Del Piero was always a bit of a curiosity: a Turin deity, who refused to leave Juventus, even when his footballing prowess was withering.

The diminutive Italian became a cult figure, the embodiment of club love. So when Bonnuci moved from Juventus to AC Milan for €40 million, Del Piero was flabbergasted. “It’s very surprising,” commented the former striker. “I would never have thought anything like this could happen.”

It had happened: Why and How? Was the very notion of loyalty in play over Bonnuci’s blasphemy, moving to Milan? Football players are not so different from mere mortals, who watch and admire from the touchline and sometimes cringe at the gilded livelihoods of their heroes – those paladins want happiness and profit in their careers too, validation and recognition, or, in no particular order, profit and happiness. Kinetic pleasure above all.

Perhaps those elements were missing from Bonucci’s last days at Juventus. Slowly a maelstrom of murky details began to emerge: a strained relationship with Juventus coach Massimiliano Allegri, an alleged unsavory bust-up with Paulo Dybala and Andrea Barzagli at half-time of the Champions League final and a pushy agent in Alessandro Lucci.

Will Rossoneri’s glory days return?

The Praetorian BBC guard – of which Bonucci was a cornerstone with his emblematic grit and fine footballing skills, from perfect anticipation to a gentle passing range – was reduced to a pitiful trio of training cones against Real Madrid in the second half. For many years, Bonucci had been the bedrock of Juventus that reestablished itself as European contender.

Bonucci’s move is a reverse Pirlo: Italy’s elegant maestro – Bonucci extols many fine virtues, but elegance is not one of them – left the San Siro for Juventus in 2011 after friction with Allegri, but the implication of AC Milan’s little coup is not so different from what Pirlo’s exit signified at the time: can the acquiring club challenge the top dog of Italian football? Perhaps. Perhaps not. Speculation is futile, but a favorite pastime in football.

Bonucci was Milan’s 10th signing this summer, with the club spending €61 million on a back line that includes prodigious goalkeeper Gianluigi Donnarumma, Matteo Musacchio, Andrea Conti and Alessio Romagnoli, a future Squadra Azzurra back line in the making. The concern is higher up the field. Can Lucas Biglia, once an outcast at lowly Anderlecht in Belgium, carry Milan’s midfield? Is Carlos Bacca enough of a striker? Dortmund star Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang has also been linked to the San Siro.

But all the splurging is a distortion: Milan can’t compete at the highest level and return to those balmy, sweet glory days of yesteryear when Ricardo Kaka and Pirlo enchanted football aficionados everywhere, because the club doesn’t have a long-term vision. In fact, the cash-extravaganza may cause an existential crisis at Milan.

Milan’s quest to topple Juventus

In the spring, China’s Yonghong Li replaced Silvio Berlusconi as the club’s majority shareholder, a master of ceremonies at Bunga Bunga parties making way for a suspect Chinese entrepreneur. Li is believed to own a 28% share in Renshuo’s New China Building project in Guangzhou, a €1 billion real-estate development, and has also owned shares in packaging companies and phosphate mines.

The manoeuvring and machinations behind Li’s takeover were intriguing, with the involvement of Luxembourg-based company Rossoneri Sport Investment and US private equity fund Elliot Management, which has the reputation of a vulture fund. Li took out a loan of €300 million from Elliot Management, which AC Milan will have to repay by 2018 at an interest rate of 11.5%.

Is this club to supplant Juventus then next season? The Old Lady let a much heralded centre-back, arguably the best one in the world, go, but that may not have been a bad deal. Juventus is a resilient club, with resources to rebuild. In the past they sold a formidable phalanx of top players, including Pirlo and Paul Pogba. Juventus was never traumatised by those exits, not even by Del Piero’s lachrymose departure. The club is bigger than any player, and, in the end, always comes out stronger.