With the death of Berlusconi, former boss of AC Milan, a pioneer of foot business disappears – Liberation

2023-06-12 13:07:03

The boss had taken over the Lombard club in 1986 on the verge of bankruptcy. He transformed it into one of the best teams on the planet, laying some of the first stones of “foot business” in the process.

It was the “prime fan” of AC Milan. Silvio Berlusconi, who died at the age of 86 on Monday June 12, led the Lombard club for three decades, making it one of the biggest teams in the world thanks to stars recruited at gold prices. For the former Italian Prime Minister, owner since 2018 of another Serie A club (Monza), AC Milan was an undeniable passion but also a formidable communication tool at the service of his economic affairs and his career. policy.

During the 31-year reign of the “Cavaliere” (between 1986 and 2017, with a few breaks when he was head of government), the club with the famous red and black striped jersey won 29 trophies, including five Champions Leagues and eight titles. Italian champions. Milan is then a stronghold of world football, under the orders of coaches Arrigo Sacchi, apostle of the beautiful game, or Fabio Capello, winner of the Champions League in 1994 by outclassing Barça in the final (4-0).

The stars follow one another when they do not mix there: the Italians Franco Baresi, Paolo Maldini and Andrea Pirlo, the Dutch Marco Van Basten, Ruud Gullit and Frank Rijkaard, but also Jean-Pierre Papin, George Weah, Andreï Shevchenko , Clarence Seedorf, Ronaldinho or Zlatan Ibrahimovic. Gullit, Van Basten, Weah, Shevchenko and Kaka have all won the Ballon d’Or during their time at the club.

Rivalry with Tapie

This success had a price. At a time when players had not yet got into the habit of changing their tunic every three years or crossing borders, Silvio Berlusconi was a claimed pioneer of “foot business”, multiplying gleaming transfers, as will the same time Bernard Tapie in Marseille.

The rivalry between OM and Milan also gave rhythm to European football in the early 1990s, culminating in the 1993 Champions League final won by the Phocaeans (1-0). In the 2000s, Milan won the Champions League twice more, and let slip a third when they were leading 3-0 at half-time against Liverpool in 2005. Now Real Madrid coach Carlo Ancelotti has won two Champions Leagues with AC Milan as a player and then two as a coach. “There remains infinite gratitude to the president, but above all to an ironic, loyal, intelligent, sincere man, decisive in my adventure as a footballer first, then as a coach”he tweeted.

But Berlusconi’s wealth is no longer enough to attract the best stars as ever more powerful shareholders arrive in Europe from the United States, Asia or the Gulf. “His” Milan is gradually declining and no longer winning anything after 2011, Berlusconi’s last Italian championship title.

But Berlusconi’s wealth is no longer enough to attract the best stars as ever more powerful shareholders arrive in Europe from the United States, Asia or the Gulf. “His” Milan is gradually declining and no longer winning anything after 2011, Berlusconi’s last Italian championship title. The beautiful story, born in 1986 with the acquisition of a club on the verge of bankruptcy, ends in 2017 with the sale to a Chinese businessman for more than 700 million euros. Weighed down by considerable debts, the club passed the following year into the hands of an American investment fund, Elliott, which itself sold it last summer to another fund, RedBird Capital, for 1 .2 billion euros, after bringing it back to the top (champion 2022).

Last lap at Monza

Leaving Milan, Berlusconi explains that “to be competitive at the highest European and world level, modern football requires investments and resources that a single family can no longer afford”. While remaining, of course, «the premier fan» du «Diavolo», the name of the Rossoneri club. “This is the team my dad taught me to love when I was a kid,” he also said.

The boss of Fininvest, however, has not finished with the round ball. In 2018, he bought Monza, a team then in the third division, with the idea of ​​taking it to the top flight for the first time. As he had done at AC Milan, he entrusted the management to his usual right arm, Adriano Galliani, a native of Monza.

Boosted by the businessman’s investments, the challenge was met in four years: Monza, whose stadium is ten minutes from Berlusconi’s villa, in Arcore, has been playing in Serie A since the summer of 2022. After a maintenance easily acquired this season, Berlusconi dreamed out loud of a league title.

Although many in Italy had learned not to pay too much attention to the words of the aging leader, he did not give up a provocation. Which, last December, had engaged in a new slippage by promising its players, in the middle of Christmas dinner, to bring them “in the locker room” and “because of prostitutes” to motivate them. “A simple locker room joke”, had pleaded the incorrigible Berlusconi in response to the general bronca.