Gattuso: AC Milan must spend to compete again

Gennaro Gattuso has called on AC Milan 's owners to invest more money in the club in an attempt to return them to European football's elite.

Gattuso – who won two league titles and two Champions League winner's medals during his 13-year spell at San Siro - believes Milan's underachievement in recent years can be explained by a simple lack of top-class players.

The 37-year-old, who became Pisa's head coach in August, called on president Silvio Berlusconi to spend more to build the kind of side he starred in alongside the likes of Andrea Pirlo and Andriy Shevchenko.

"To win major trophies like the Champions League you have to have champions in your team," he told FIFA.com.

"At Milan in those years, we could afford to have the likes of [Alessandro] Costacurta, [Jaap] Stam, Rivaldo, Rui Costa and [Filippo] Inzaghi on the bench. We had a squad consisting of 22 to 23 top-level athletes.

"In order for Milan - and Italian football as a whole - to get back into contention, we have to start investing again."

Milan, who are 10th in Serie A after nine matches of the 2015-16 campaign, host Chievo on Wednesday.