Article snippet: MONACO — Looking back, Vadim Vasilyev can pinpoint the precise moment A.S. Monaco changed. Vasilyev, the club’s vice president, can name a place — the Grimaldi Forum, a grand conference center on the Monte Carlo seafront — and a date: Sept. 21, 2015. That evening, around 1,000 of Monaco’s most ardent fans packed into a hall to hear what Vasilyev — accompanied by Leonardo Jardim, the club’s coach, and Jérémy Toulalan, its captain then — had to say for himself. Over the previous two summers, those fans had watched as one of the most ambitious projects in European soccer seemed to crumble. Monaco had spent hundreds of millions of dollars acquiring some of soccer’s brightest stars; now they were all being allowed to leave. James Rodríguez went to Real Madrid in 2014; a year later, Yannick Ferreira Carrasco joined him across the city at Atlético; Radamel Falcao joined Manchester United, then Chelsea; Geoffrey Kondogbia left for Inter Milan. And then, a few weeks before the meeting in Monte Carlo and on the eve of the season, Anthony Martial, a young French forward of blistering promise, had been sold to United. In 12 months, Monaco had gone from a boutique of shimmering luxury to an apparently endless fire sale. The fans wanted answers. “They were really angry,” Vasilyev said. “We had many departures that summer. They needed someone to go out and face them.” Over the course of several hours — at first onstage, and then over drinks and petits fours — Vasilyev did just ... Link to the full article to read more