How ex-prime minister changed Italian soccer forever

In the two decades Silvio Berlusconi (center) has owned AC Milan, the club has won five European Cups. AP

By Keir Radnedge, Special to SI.com, World Soccer

Roman Abramovich has a long way to go before he can even come within a mile of the achievements and status of Silvio Berlusconi.

AC Milan's owner and president has been largely in command of European and Italian club soccer for more than two decades after building his initial millionaire's empire through a media conglomeration based on regional commercial television channels.

In 1986, Milan, the club he had always supported, was scandal-ridden and bankruptcy-bound. Berlusconi decided to step in. His father, Luigi, didn't approve, warning: "The only return on your money will be the bad publicity that comes to every president of that club."

Berlusconi, however, was not so much on an ego trip as a commercial voyage, possessed with a vision that matched that of FIFA president João Havelange and Adidas heir Horst Dassler when they laid the television/sponsorship-driven foundation for the World Cup's enrichment in the mid-1970s.

He was the personification of the aggressive commercialism that swiftly revolutionized European club soccer and led directly to the creation of the Champions League as well as the G-14 group of elite clubs and UEFA's own club forum.

Berlusconi's TV empire took advantage of the Europe-wide broadcasting expansion powered by the development of cable and satellite technology and facilitated by a competitive liberalism imposed by European law.

His TV channels provided a light entertainment diet of game shows, pop music and soccer that shattered the grip of state broadcaster RAI. They also generated profits that propelled Berlusconi on into publishing, insurance and grocery chains.

Berlusconi went out to win friends through soccer. So successfully did his business expand -- and his ego along with it -- that he employed his corporate preeminence in Italy as a springboard into politics, becoming prime minister. With a chillingly effective populism, he even named his political party Forza Italia, the traditional encouragement for the national team.

Milan was in a sorry state when Berlusconi swooped. The club, one of the European Cup's original giants, had been relegated twice in quick succession -- once as punishment for a match-fixing scandal -- and was $40 million in debt.

Berlusconi, setting a pattern Abramovich would emulate at Chelsea, paid off the debts and provided the cash to buy Ajax's Marco van Basten, the finest center forward of his era, plus Ruud Gullit from PSV Eindhoven for a then world record $12 million. After Milan duly carried off the Serie A championship for the first time in nine years, Berlusconi also financed the acquisition of a third key Dutchman, Frank Rijkaard.

Turning stars into winners takes a top-class coach. Berlusconi found one in Arrigo Sacchi. The shoe-maker from Fusignano had never played at professional level, but as he said: "You don't have to have been a horse to be a successful jockey."

Sacchi's horse sense produced a winning thoroughbred by mixing Dutch fluidity with Italian backbone, such players as stopper Alessandro Costacurta, playmaker Carlo Ancelotti (now Milan's coach), sweeper and skipper Franco Baresi and magnificent young left back Paolo Maldini.

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