It’s a spring day at the end of May and Monza is playing the most important football match in the club’s history.
But when everything is to be decided, with only minutes left to play, owner Silvio Berlusconi sits dozing in the stands of the Arena Garibaldi in Pisa. His right-hand man for many years, Adriano Galliani, is not seen at all when the home team Pisa scores 3-2 and thus takes the second playoff final to extra time. Galliani was too nervous.
– I couldn’t watch. Out of 360 hours of playoff football, I saw maybe 150 or 200 minutes, the club president said in connection with the victory according to sportsajten The Athletic.
Just in time for the extension to be decided, however, Berlusconi has woken up and Galliani has regained his place in the stands. Together, the duo will see Monza score both one and two goals and thus secure a place in the Italian first division. The club has never been there before.
– Silvio Berlusconi and Adriano Galliani are driving the Monza sedan 2018.
Photo: Claudio Furlan/TT
In 2017 Berlusconi sold his beloved Milan after 31 years at the helm. At the time, many probably thought that they had seen the last of Italy’s former prime minister in top football. Instead, Silvio Berlusconi jokes about new series victories and Champions League games with Monza.
How did this happen?
The entry into Italian football was dramatic. On a summer day in 1986, a few months after Silvio Berlusconi’s purchase of AC Milan became public, thousands of supporters had gathered at the Arena Civica in Milan to welcome the new owner.
Together with players and managers, Berlusconi arrived in helicopters at the same time as Richard Wagner’s “Valkyrie Ride” thundered from the speaker system in the background.
The 1980s had been a decade marked by scandals, financial problems and relegations for the big club, which was then on the ice. The “Apocalypse Now” inspired entrance was seen by some as excessive and embarrassing – but for Berlusconi it was a way to show that under him Milan was thinking new. Many years later, club icon Franco Baresi told me that he still remembered that day like it was yesterday.
– It wasn’t just the helicopter, it was more a feeling that a huge shift had taken place. That things would be different, he said according to football site Fourfourtwo.
– AC Milan before the Champions League final against Marseille in 1993. The starting eleven included players such as Paolo Maldini, Franco Baresi, Marco van Basten and Frank Rijkaard.
Photo: Bildbyrån
That’s exactly how it turned out that too. Because with the pair horse Adriano Galliani at his side, it didn’t take long until AC Milan were once again fighting at the top of the table. The Swedish coach Nils Liedholm was replaced by Arrigo Sacchi while large sums were spent on new players. Roberto Donadoni and the Dutch trio of Marco van Basten, Ruud Gullit and Frank Rijkaard were among those brought in.
In the 1988 season, Milan won the league for the first time in nine years. In 1989 Milan won the European Cup, then the Champions League, for the first time in 20 years and the following year the team repeated the feat.
With Berlusconi at the helm, Milan took home a total of 29 titles, including eight league victories and five titles in the Champions League and the European Cup. But it wasn’t just on the football field that the charismatic Italian made his mark.
Berlusconi had a background in the media industry and realized early on the power of television. For him, it was obvious that Milan would reach an audience outside the arena as well. The solution to the spelled out television and the rising television revenues have since then been a strong contributor to the commercialization of modern football.
Silvio Berlusconi ran Milan like a company, as Nils Liedholm testified in an interview with Expressen a few years before his death.
– He modernized the whole club, said Liedholm among other things then.
In one of his first press conferences, Berlusconi himself claimed that he saw Milan not only as a football team.
– It is also a product to sell, something to offer the market.
– Silvio Berlusconi’s choice to hire a then relatively unproven Arrigo Sacchi was questioned by many. But under Sacchi, Milan won the league once and the European Cup twice.
Photo: Bildbyrån
Aside from the football field, he used the club as a springboard to politics. Via the self-started party Forza Italia – and later the People of Freedom – Berlusconi ruled Italy as head of government for three terms (1994–95, 2001–2006 and 2008–2011).
– Milan’s success has definitely helped Berlusconi’s political aspirations. It is doubtful whether he would be Prime Minister now without that link. Football and politics have always been connected in Berlusconi’s mind. Football as a way into politics, and the dynamics of politics as a mirror image of sport, said political analyst Franco Pavoncello according to New York Times 2010.
Large parts of the 2010s, however, became a gloomy story for the once popular Berlusconi. Crises and scandals were certainly nothing new – during his leadership there had already been allegations of abuse of power, corruption, fraud, bribery and sex-buying.
– Alexandre Pato and Ronaldinho helped win the league title in 2011, the last under Silvio Berlusconi’s ownership.
Photo: Alberto Pellaschiara/AP
But there Berlusconi had previously managed to shake off the scandals, but these now began to catch up with him. Italy’s euro crisis was the last straw and in a parliamentary vote in November 2011 it was clear that Berlusconi no longer had the political majority with them.
When the then 75-year-old prime minister went to the presidential palace in Rome to resign, he was booed by thousands of angry Italians shouting “clown” and “prison”. Football-wise, Milan had stagnated. Instead of winning European titles, the club fought in the middle of the table. In 2017, Milan was sold to a Chinese consortium with the hope that the new ownership could make the club a major power again.
Barely a year later, Berlusconi heard that the football club Monza was for sale. Adriano Galliani was born in the city and during a lunch at the Berlusconi family residence in Arcore, he informed that an American consortium was trying to buy the club which was struggling with financial problems, according to The Athletic.
The city of Monza, located about 20 minutes away by car, is best known from a sporting point of view for the Autodromo Nazionale Monza racing track where Formula 1 is run every year. Motor-interested Swedes will also remember that it was in Monza that Ronnie Peterson crashed so badly that he died shortly afterwards in hospital in Milan.
The football club? It led a hidden existence in the country’s lower divisions and had never played in Serie A. Nevertheless, Galliani’s information was so interesting that Berlusconi asked family and board members for the green light to hijack the deal. He got that and on September 28, 2018 it was announced that the holding company Fininvest, controlled by Berlusconi, bought Monza.
The choice of chairman was obvious (Adriano Galliani), as was the big goal: to one day see Monza meet Milan in Serie A at the San Siro in Milan.
– Dane Christian Gytkjær scored the last goal of the playoff match.
Photo: Claudio Furlan/TT
This time Berlusconi left the helicopter on the runway but just like when he took over Milan, the Italian pumped in money. Former Milan player Christian Brocchi was appointed as the new coach and in his second year the club won Serie C. With high-profile players such as Mario Balotelli and Kevin Prince Boateng (both ex-Milan players), Monza were expected to power through Serie B and directly secure promotion to the first division. When that didn’t happen, Brocchi left at the end of May 2021.
A year later, the long-awaited promotion finally came after the playoff victory against Pisa. During the summer, Monza once again invested heavily by bringing in established players such as Matteo Pessina (from Atalanta), Stefano Sensi (Inter), Alessio Cragno (Cagliari) and Andrea Ranocchia (Inter).
The Serie A season kicks off on August 13. But only on Sunday, October 23, the big dream will be fulfilled: Monza meets Milan at San Siro. Berlusconi has already claimed that what he achieved with Monza trumps the success in Milan.
– I am still the most successful football president in the world thanks to my Milan. But this time, thanks to Adriano Galliani who convinced me to jump on this new adventure, we have done something out of the ordinary. We have given the city of Monza the place they deserve in Serie A, Berlusconi said according to Football-italia.
– According to his own statement, Adriano Galliani has been “on loan” to Milan for 31 years. Now he is back at his hometown club.
Photo: Claudio Furlan/TT
For him Milan was – at least in part – always about power. With a tarnished reputation and ongoing lawsuits to this day, it’s easy to see Monza as yet another way to recapture the influence of yesteryear with new football successes.
However, those closest to the 85-year-old insist that this is not the case. For The New York Times told Adriano Galliani in February 2020 that it is instead a project that comes straight from the heart.
– It’s pure romance. Monza is a mental state.