AC Milan, Serie A and Silvio Berlusconi are all in
decline. Remember the better times.
From the
moment the news of Lentini’s signing broke, an obsession with all things AC
Milan and Serie A took root in the mind of that once-innocent Irish lad. It
turned out to be a fascination that inexplicably failed to dwindle in the face
of relentless corruption, falling standards and apathetic crowds, not to
mention the rise of less alluring competitions – such as the admirable but overly
wholesome Bundesliga. Though both the club and the league may have lost the
lustre of their 1990s peak, they retain the glorious pomp that separates
Italian football from the rest through the projection of a uniquely Italian
bravura: a bizarre magnetism derived from the country’s chaos, drama and style.
“If there’s one club that sums up everything good, bad and ugly about Italian
football, it’s AC Milan,” was the perfect summation of The Rough Guide to Cult Football. “Their history covers glory and
shame, brilliance and bluster, technical genius and boardroom chicanery.”
Even in
decline, it’s a combination that’s hard to resist.
*****
It’s now very
clear that AC Milan are in trouble. After years of going nowhere fast they are
suddenly going backwards very quickly indeed. The playing squad is populated by
overpaid, average footballers, while those in the boardroom are preoccupied
with the typically petty, self-absorbed squabbling so common to Italian club direction,
but which the omnipotence of Silvio Berlusconi had kept in check for so long.
Now, Don Silvio’s influence is waning and there’s a new Berlusconi on the block:
his daughter, Barbara.
Barbara’s main
adversary is Adriano Galliani. She wants him gone and, eventually, she’s likely
to get her way. But Galliani is a hard man to shake off and, for now at least,
he remains in place after “crisis talks” in May. In many ways, Galliani is as
“Berlusconi” as Barbara herself, having been there from the very beginning of
Silvio’s Milan regime in 1986. His relationship with Berlusconi is comparable
to that of Passepartout’s to Phileas Fogg: a wonderfully resourceful factotum.
Galliani’s departure would be as much the end of an era at Milan as Berlusconi
selling the club, rumours of which have been circulating over the past year or
so. Singaporean businessman Peter Lim is mooted to have made a bid.
If any bid for
control of Milan was successful, it would signal a marginalisation of Silvio
Berlusconi within the club, a retreat that would occur in tandem with his
gradual disappearance from the forefront of public life in Italy.
Love him or
hate him, Berlusconi helped change football in Italy – and beyond – when he
took control of Milan in the mid-1980s. He brought the club from the brink of anonymity
to the peak of world football in half a decade, turning what had become an ordinary
provincial team into a flash, attractive and gifted side that captivated a
continent. You may not miss Silvio when he goes – he is after all a comically
vulgar specimen – but we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that what he set into
motion at Milan had a profound effect on the game, as well as Italy itself.
“When dealing
with modern Italy,” writes Paddy Agnew in Forza
Italia, “it is impossible to ignore Silvio Berlusconi. […] This applies as
much to football as to politics or business.”
Berlusconi is
nothing if not an opportunist. So much of his success in all walks of life has
come about by seeing a chance and taking it. He started out in construction,
building luxury compounds, but spotted a niche when cable TV began to be
deregulated in Italy. The residents of his élite gated communities wanted more
from their televisions, and Berlusconi was only too happy to provide it.
Gradually, the majority of transmitters in Lombardy were snapped up by
Mediaset, Berlusconi’s media company, and in the early 1980s, it became clear
that televised football could drive huge viewing figures in Italy. Mediaset’s
flagship channel, Canale 5, carved out a name for itself based on its coverage
of the sport, and by the middle of the same decade, Berlusconi had become a media
baron. Over the years, Berlusconi changed the way people watched football. Out
went the old-fashioned, and in came the dancing girls, comedians and everyday
celebrities to spice up the world of football coverage. Footballers became the
object of TV gossip, a notion seized upon by Berlusconi’s channels.
“The modern
history of Milan can now be written only with reference to a key moment: 20
February 1986,” says John Foot in Calcio.
In the months preceding that moment, Don Silvio had begun to take an interest
in AC Milan. Then as now, the club had stagnated, floundering in mid-table in
the aftermath of a relegation and – shock – a financial scandal, so Berlusconi
got the club on the cheap. Quickly, he set about revamping Milan in his own image:
grandiose, loud and ambitious. Berlusconi wanted the club to be successful, for
it to reflect on the pitch his own achievements off it. But the club was more
than a vanity project; it was a commercial crutch, an enhancement of the
Berlusconi brand. To make it work, he needed the team to win, so he began
spending money.
Long before
the famous purchase of Lentini, in had come the Dutch trio of Gullit, Van
Basten and Rijkaard. Van Basten had been courted by Berlusconi at the Italian’s
palatial villa in Arcore, while it had taken two flights in a private jet to
convince Gullit to come to Milan. By the time Rijkaard arrived in 1988, the
club was soaring, with home-grown players like Paolo Maldini, Billy Costacurta
and Franco Baresi emerging to complement the international stars. At the end of
Rijkaard’s first season, Milan had returned to the top of Serie A, their first
title since 1979. Berlusconi’s shrewd direction, ably assisted by Galliani in
the role of roving talent-scout and head coach Arrigo Sacchi, had paid instant
dividends. The appointment of Sacchi was famously a masterstroke, with the
little man from Fusignano electrifying the then staid world of Serie A with a
unique brand of high-pressing, technical attacking play. Alongside the Dutch
triumvirate, Sacchi was integral to Milan’s early success, and it was the
vision of Berlusconi that brought them all together.
Relentlessly,
his media empire rammed AC Milan down the throats of TV viewers, forcing their
popularity on the audience – of course, it helped that they were in fact an
outstanding side – and bringing in huge amounts of revenue to bolster the team.
Already, Silvio was indicating a strong desire to take a hands-on approach to
his new acquisition. Over time, it would be an approach that would help sweep
him into power as the Prime Minister of his country.
While Milan
were busy conquering Europe, retaining the European Cup in 1990 after doling
out a thrashing to Steaua Bucharest in the 1989 final, a political system that
had dominated half the continent since World War Two was receding. Communism’s
collapse in eastern and central Europe worked along roughly the same timeline
as AC Milan’s return to prominence. Italy, with its borders on Yugoslavia, had
long centred its politics on the “red threat”, with the prime focus of
political parties there being to keep left-wing politics out of government. So
when communism disappeared as the fear factor, Italian politicians were at a
loss. Sensing his time had come, the arch-opportunist Berlusconi seized centre-stage
and launched his political party, Forza
Italia, in 1993. In May 1994, AC Milan scorched Johan Cruyff’s Barcelona in
the Champions League final: one month later, Silvio Berlusconi was Prime
Minister of Italy. It was all about symbiosis: football, politics and media –
the triple-pronged attack that put Silvio Berlusconi and AC Milan at the
forefront of a continent’s attention.
On the pitch,
Milan won in style. It was not for nothing that Berlusconi had, memorably,
registered the club to his company’s “entertainment” wing. He wanted the team’s
football to win hearts and minds, and his eccentric little coach helped deliver
on that. Sacchi’s attacking strategy, as well as the presence of a number of
charismatic players, made them a mouth-watering prospect. At the back they were
iconic, intimidating and classy: there was Baresi, the great libero described so evocatively by
Sheridan Bird as a “rumpled leader”; Maldini, pre-Raphaelite god and gifted
reader of the game; Costacurta, sheer class; Tassotti, hard as nails. The
midfield was anchored by Rijkaard, Ancelotti and Albertini, flanked by a
variety of stars like Donadoni, Boban and, of course, Lentini. Up front there
was Van Basten, the “Swan of Utrecht”, Gullit, and a host of others such as
Simone, Massaro and Papin. Early-Berlusconi Milan was a super-team.
They, along
with a general uplift in the fortunes of Italian football, made Serie A the
most attractive league in the world by the mid-1990s, with Sampdoria, Juventus,
Inter and Parma all either winning or reaching the final of Europe’s two main
continental competitions. Now, to hear the names of even mediocre players of
the epoch is to experience instant retro-zeitgeist, to be transported back to a
time when the “A” pitches were stalked by the best in the world, and the league
dominated the international transfer market. From 1952 to 2000 the world
transfer record was broken 22 times, 18 of which were by Italian clubs. In the
1990s, with the league awash with cash, Serie A broke the record six times. The
Milan method had spread fast.
With
Berlusconi’s channels now piping the league – and his populist political
message – into millions of homes, the decade became a golden era for Serie A. Indeed,
television coverage is central to the perception of the league. Even from the
point of view of an outsider looking in, one can’t look back at the glory years
of Serie A without seeing them through the prism of how they were transmitted
to our own lonely north-western isles. Enchanted by the dulcetry of James
Richardson and Peter Brackley, a certain generation of Channel 4 viewers in the
UK and Ireland will always associate the league with Gazzetta Football Italia.
Fittingly,
though, it was television that was to end the boom-time that it created in
Serie A. “Many of these teams were built on borrowed money and had fanciful
expectations about future incomes”, Richardson himself told The Guardian in 2006. “And when the TV
bubble burst, the whole thing collapsed.” Milan hung on longer than most,
largely because of the acumen of their padrone.
While the league was collapsing around them, the club was reborn in the
mid-2000s after a quiet period in the late ‘90s and the early-millennium. Berlusconi
had lost his mandate in the Italian cabinet in 1995, and did not return to
office until 2001, where he would remain on-and-off until 2011. Not long after his
second term had begun, his government passed “creative accountancy” legislation
that allowed Milan to write off losses of almost €250m. Coincidentally – or not
– this return to power overlapped with two Champions League victories in ’03
and ’07, while the 2005 final proved to be simultaneously one of the great European
stories and one of its greatest injustices. Milan were as powerful a club as any
in the world during this period, particularly given that Adriano Galliani was
also serving as president of the Italian league at the time.
But it
wouldn’t last.
The cracks had
long since begun to appear in the Forza
Italia setup. As the party’s fortunes dipped and lapsed into infighting, so
too did AC Milan. The club wasn’t helped by a general drop-off in Serie A’s
standards against the background of scandals involving match-fixing, bribery
and general corruption. Berlusconi the politician was weakened, as was
Berlusconi the president. Where once the club had been pulling off transfer coups
like the capture of the three Dutchmen, they were no longer doing so, instead
beginning to pay large wages for players not quite out of the top drawer –
Sulley Muntari, Kevin-Prince Boateng, Keisuke Honda – and putting them in a
team with veterans, journeymen and also-rans like Abbiati, Bonera and Taarabt. Worryingly
for il Diavolo, their league record
has seen the team win just two league titles in the 21st century,
and from the second decade of the new millennium, AC Milan have begun to look a
very average side indeed. Since their 2007 triumph, the club have not made it
past the Quarter Final of the Champions League, only once going beyond the
second round in that time, and will take part in the Europa League next year.
It’s hard to
say with certainty exactly what is behind the decline, but it is most certainly
tied up with the gradual weakening of both Berlusconi’s political and
entrepreneurial power, as well as the infernal, internal power struggle. Additionally,
Milan have been faced with the rebirth of one of their closest rivals,
Juventus. Where once Milan were the innovators, splashing out on training
grounds, ultra-professional organisation and administration, the Old Lady has
since caught up or even overtaken them in that regard. Juve now have their own
stadium – a rarity in Italy – and a modern training complex at Vinovo to rival
Milanello. The Turin team have won three league titles in a row, and look
ominously superior on the field to the rest of “A”.
Worrying also
for Milan is the fact that the league’s middle-ranking clubs, often also-rans
in comparison to the country’s big clubs, have recently started to catch up.
Teams such as Roma, Lazio, Napoli, Parma and Fiorentina have all been resurgent
over the past number of years, emerging to challenge the traditionally dominant
trio of Milan, Inter and Juve. Sides like these now possess
players of gifts comparable to those on the books of the big three. Fans who
enjoyed “A” at its 1990s peak will know that the strength of the “second tier”
teams made the league what it was – many of the best memories of Serie A were
created by gifted sides emerging from mid-table normality to challenge for
titles. Think of the Sampdoria of Mancini and Lombardo, the Fiorentina of
Batistuta and Rui Costa, and the unforgettable Parma of Buffon, Thuram,
Cannavaro, Veron, Chiesa and Crespo. Although today’s Serie A cannot be
compared to its peak in the 1990s, it is currently a more competitive league
than it has been over the past ten or so years, with the playing quality being
as evenly distributed as it was in the final decade of last century. The
Italian World Cup squad for Brazil contained just nine players from the big
three – not a single Inter player made the cut – with Parma and Torino
providing three apiece, and one each from Genoa, Lazio, Roma, Fiorentina and
Napoli.
Perhaps, Milan
have in recent times relied too much on foreign players, but a new generation
of local youth is emerging to take the club forward. It is with them that the
future lies, whether that be in the form of Stephan El Shaarawy, Mattia De
Sciglio, Ignazio Abate or Mario Balotelli. A solid core of Italians must be
fostered if the club is to regain an identity slowly slipping away with the
demise of Berlusconi and the old playing guard. Fittingly, the man entrusted to
guide the club in the right direction is Filippo Inzaghi, formerly Milan’s
youth team coach.
Inzaghi
replaced Clarence Seedorf as head coach, another ex-player whose installation
at the helm was highly politicised, wrapped up as it was in the contretemps
between Barbara Berlusconi and other club directors. Super Pippo will bring
intelligence and guile to the role, facets of his playing style that have been
reflected in his coaching manner at youth level. Though inexperienced like
Seedorf with regard to management, his time with the primavera will have provided a foundation upon which he can build
his career. He will hope to avoid the precedent of Andrea Stramaccioni, the
former Inter coach who was also elevated to a first team position having
impressed in his club’s youth setup.
Evidently,
Milan like to promote from within and for some time now, Paolo Maldini has been
hovering on the fringes of the Milan directorship: many see him as a potential
replacement for Galliani somewhere down the line. Certainly, his connections
within the game would make him an ideal candidate, while the prospect of a
Maldini-Inzaghi axis will have many slavering in delight. If anyone has the
authority and charisma to drag the directors back in line and arrest the slide,
one feels it may be Maldini, though his influence and popularity make him an
intimidating prospect for directors more concerned about their own careers.
Should Maldini end up the new Galliani, he will have to replicate some of the transfer
wisdom shown all the way back in the 1980s, when the bald eagle of Monza first
helped the Dutch to colonise Milan.
Italy is a
country familiar with falls from grace. The Romans were doing it long before it
was cool, but we still look back in awe at their feats, at the glory they once
achieved. We know that even if they no longer boast an empire, they once ruled
half the world. There is, unquestionably, a legacy. So it is that whatever
happens to AC Milan and Serie A, it should be appreciated that they are great
institutions of our game, whose continued decline ought to be viewed not with schadenfreude, but with dismay. The
football world is a darker place without a strong Serie A, and the league a
dull one bereft of a marauding Milan – or Inter, for that matter. Those who
delight in their fall should remember the joys with which they have provided us
in the past. After all, even Silvio has his merits.
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