Ex Milan youth chief Galli slams Maldini: ‘You can’t talk about youth development without experiencing it’

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.”