When Berlusconi tried to transform Milan into the capital of sport

It was the beginning of the 1990s when sporting Milan won almost everywhere with the Rossoneri colors. In football, with Milan, rugby, volleyball, baseball, even ice hockey. Polisportiva Milan, founded in 1989 by Silvio Berlusconi, who died on Monday at the age of 86, had the ambition to transform the Lombard capital into the Italian capital of sport. He succeeded. It didn’t last long though. Five years, the time of great Italian, European and world successes with Milan, which continued even after, of two Italian Cups and two Cup Winners’ Cups in baseball, three championships in hockey, four (and one Coppa Italia in rugby) , one Cup Winners’ Cup and two Club World Cups in men’s volleyball. The sports club was missing a piece: the Olimpia Milano of basketball, the third team in Milan, the only one that united all the supporters of the city, the one that the Gabetti family never wanted to give him. Without Olimpia, Berlusconi’s project made no sense to exist. Without Olimpia there was no possibility of reuniting the winning Milan under a single flag. Without Olimpia the accounts didn’t add up. The sports ones, especially the economic ones: volleyball, hockey and baseball didn’t make the Milanese heart beat faster, rugby even more so, at least the tradition was long, successful, fascinating, above all a slight to the Nerazzurri cousins, given that the Amatori Milano was born in 1927 from a rib of Inter.

The short season of Milan winning the Mediolanum-branded Fininvest ended in 1994. The sports club was dissolved, only rugby lasted a few more years. In 1995 Silvio Berlusconi said he regretted not having completed his “mission to give Milan the best in every sport”, although, “the best has arrived at San Siro and in the most spectacular way possible”.

It was a unique sporting moment. In Milan between 1989 and 1994 there was so much of the best that Italian sport had to offer. Subnetwork included Franco Bertoli, Bob Ctvrtlik, Andrea Lucchetta, Jeff Stork, Andrea Zorzi; on the ice are Lucio Topatigh, the strongest Italian player ever, Jari Kurri, Sandy Pellegrino and Michael De Angelis; with the oval in hand Massimo Cutitta, Diego Dominguez, Massimo Giovanelli, Franco Properzi and the strongest of all: David Campese. A moment so special as to make Enzo Jannacci say that ‘there was really a great Milan, but really great, enormous’.

A unique sporting moment interrupted by a block under the basket.

It could have lasted longer, it could have gone even better, it could have gotten even bigger. Surely it could have been even faster. It could, it didn’t happen.

It was 1989 when Fininvest got the idea of ​​investing in Formula 1. The Benetton family had its own team, it conquered podiums and victories, why not do the same? Formula 1 was a good form of publicity, a lot of people saw it at the time. Berlusconi declined immediately. Too many investments and too low the possibility of being immediately competitive

It took him a little longer, a year later, to say no to the other great sporting idea born in the company. Behind all this, however, there wasn’t some marketing and communication expert, there was a person that the Cav had met not even ten years before, but whom he blindly trusted and appreciated for his farsightedness, good taste and above all common sense: Ennio Doris. The future president of Banca Mediolanum was a great bicycle enthusiast, he spoke of cycling with passion and competence and occasionally he even talked about it with Berlusconi who understood little or nothing about cycling and even less about cycling, a distant sport, very distant from his interests . But that time he listened, because the plan was interesting, ambitious, in his own way brilliant. Why not bring together Gianni Bugno and Claudio Chiappucci in a single team? A great cycling team with the two then champions would have been a huge marketing opportunity for the company. She could have been, she wasn’t.

Giorgio Bocca recounted that for a few days more than one sporting director was called from Arcore and that the color of the shirt was even discussed: white with red and black stripes? or all red and black?

Nothing came of it. Silvio Berlusconi said that cycling was not something for Milan. No riders were contacted, no bikes and jerseys chosen. Bugno and Chiappucci never raced for the same team.

Yet Silvio Berlusconi also won in cycling. And in spite of him. It was between 1996 and 1998, it was thanks to, or perhaps because of, the Love & Life of Ivano Fanini, that in 1996 at the Milan-Sanremo, he had the gimmick to put ForzArcore, with the Forza Italia colors, on the shirt of the his team.

The Cav. he found out after the fact, he found an opportunity, he helped finance the team for two and a half years. On the other hand, he liked the exuberance of Ivano Fanini, making a team with an anti-abortion message, taking the bicycles to the Vatican, relying on unknown young people and runners from many parts of the world, giving first and second chances, always speaking to say their own, paying little heed to what is around them.

He won despite himself in the Giro, in Portugal, France, Poland, Switzerland, even in Chile, Morocco and South Africa. Those were the first years of true globalization of cycling. The Rossoneri of the Amore & Vita shirts could be seen from afar. And not so much for the colors, for the orientation of the stripes. The vertical ones had been seen a few times in groups. They arrived impromptu and a little out of flattery, then luckily they disappeared. In his way, and in spite of him, that too was half a revolution.

And also that time without Bugno and Chiappucci in the same team.