Berlusconi, a life on the attack that has conquered even non-Milan supporters

He liked to play attack, if it were up to him he would have bought only center forwards or number 10s. Berlusconi had also described the battle against illness as an all-offensive match, already knowing that he would lose. He liked to joke about the myth of personal invincibility, even if it was never quite clear where the joke ended and personal conviction began. Any serious conversation with Berlusconi, even harsh ones, ended in the lightness of a chat about a footballer, a coach, a team, which was almost always the same, Milan. We started with the left and the magistrates, ending with Ancelotti or Allegri.

He arrived in football in the middle of the eighties when he was already the Knight, the lord of the TVs. He was welcomed by Milan fans as the otherworldly compensation for the recent humiliations suffered: two relegations, scandals, economic bankruptcy on the horizon. The arrivals at Milanello by helicopter were a programmatic manifesto: his Milan would never have been the club of half measures. Then came all that we know. In the following thirty-one years there were triumphs in series: the cups, the championships, the champions, the coaches, the maxims on the game, in short, an interminable show. As a man of television he understood that the football stage had to expand to European and world audiences. He cared about the Champions Cups more than the Scudettos. In an interview shortly after taking on Milan, he outlined the future with a European super championship that was difficult to imagine at the time, but which resembles Ceferin’s new Champions League that we will see in two seasons. So the vision. Immediately afterwards, of course, he was interested in imposing himself. But the fundamental thing was still to play well. The concept that winning wasn’t important, but the only thing that mattered, according to Boniperti’s famous maxim, wasn’t for him. Berlusconi liked to win with applause. He hired Arrigo Sacchi when he was still nobody, he supported him in the difficult beginnings, because the coach who came from Fusignano was the football preacher he wanted: modern, spectacular, successful. Was that choice a gamble? Better, because it was another indispensable ingredient when making an important decision. There is no seduction without amazement.

If in the construction of the television empire, at a certain point, in the midst of a political and procedural dispute, Prime Minister Craxi’s intervention had been decisive, with Milan he won hands down by playing very well without any help other than huge, personal investments. Popular consensus, transformed over time into political consensus, was born there. The ball in Italy is an extraordinary access key: it allows you to arrive in the most remote of countries with the most effective of messages. Rocco’s Milan, Herrera’s Inter, Trapattoni’s Juve had won in Europe with a traditional, Italian-style game. Berlusconi placed Milan on the other side of history, that of entertainment. The beautiful game, so he said, became a prodigious slogan, the Berlusconi brand imprinted on the many cups won. “In football I have conquered everything” was the phrase he uttered most often, in any case the one he most willingly uttered.

Berlusconi who was divisive in politics, and who as a television entrepreneur even aroused hatred, as president of Milan felt he was generating completely different feelings, even in the opponents he beat. Let’s not talk about the Milan fans. Any Rossoneri fan, even if he were a fierce political enemy, he nurtured deep gratitude towards him. The Caiman became, as soon as he entered a stadium, the President of the five Champions Cups. For this he had returned to football, this time in Monza. An adventure that sportingly made little sense for someone who had won everything, but which nonetheless gave him the pleasure of feeling like Berlusconi again with the fury of forty years inside. A new beginning. Now that he is dead he will continue to share, as always.

However, it marked an era. And in football he has won everything. This no one can dispute.