Berlusconi and football: champions and triumphs that changed the world of football

He wrote the history of Milan, he invented a new way of making/thinking/selling football. Silvio Berlusconi, who died on June 12 at the age of 86, was president of Milan from 1986 to 2017: thirty-one years of success. He buys the company from Giussy Farina, sells it to the Chinese Yonghong Li. With him the Devil puts an impressive series of trophies on the showcase. There are 29 in all. Eight championships, the first in 1998 with Arrigo Sacchi. The last one in 2011, with Max Allegri. Five Champions Cup-Champions League, always marking the tournament with sword and fire with its three cult-coaches: Sacchi, Capello and Ancelotti. And other cups in Italy and abroad (7 Italian Super Cups, 1 Italian Cup, 5 European Super Cups and 3 Club World Cups), so many as to tickle his vanity and make him repeat at every turn that «Milan is the most successful club in football history». Not true, but so be it.

The truth is that his landing in Italian football – literally: the presentation was with the arrival of the team by helicopter at the Arena Civica in Milan – has transformed the ancient balance of the ball of our house, since the liquidity in the transfer market. With Massimo Moratti, Berlusconi was the father-master who spent the most in the history of Italian football. The most expensive purchase was the Portuguese Manuel Rui Costa, paid 42 million in 2001. The most advantageous sale was that of Kaka, turned to Real Madrid for 65 million. But it has been calculated that Berlusconi spent over 900 million throughout his adventure at the helm of Milan. With Berlusconi the champions have arrived. Many, many. When he took possession of Milan at home he already had two, Franco Baresi and Paolo Maldini: they will become the eternal banners of the club. Over the years, Gullit and Van Basten, Savicevic and Weah, Boban and Baggio, Shechenko and Papin, Nesta and Kakà, Ronaldinho and Ibrahimovic have been crazy. He has had no less than seven Ballon d’Or winners in his employ. Only one regret, recently confessed: not having brought Maradona to San Siro. He tried, but then realized it wasn’t going to be the case.

A lover of the beautiful game, Berlusconi has always tried to transfer this value – the show above all – also in the management of the club. Milan has been – since the end of the 80s – the Italian club that better and more than others has exported Made in Italy to the fields of Europe and the world. His Milan – as Berlusconi intensified his political agenda – has been a vehicle of propaganda and a model for other clubs. Milan has opened and closed cycles, making at least three generations of Milan fans dream. His 31 years of presidency have been marked by milestones that are now part of the collective imagination of Italian fans, not just Milan fans. It all started with the first European Cup, won in 1989 in Barcelona, in front of Steaua Bucharest: that day – May 24, 1989 – there was the largest exodus ever seen for a football match. About 80,000 AC Milan fans traveled to Barcelona. All San Siro. An epochal move that marked the beginning of a new era.

In 2018 – at the suggestion of his friend Adriano Galliani, who accompanied him in his three decades at Milan – Berlusconi attempted a new adventure, this time with the Monza, brought from Serie C to Serie A. The last story written by the AC Milan president who will be remembered the most. How much he won, how he won.