KEIR RADNEDGE COMMENTARY —- Silvio Berlusconi divided opinion not only in politics – he was prime minister of four Italian governments – but also in football.

The money and determination invested by Berlusconi, who has died aged 86 from a lung infection linked to leukaemia, rescued Milan from corruption-tainted near-bankruptcy in the mid-1980s and turned them into world, European and Italian champions.

All was thanks, in no small measure, not only to Berlusconi’s financial support for the club of which he had always been a fan but to wise investments in a then little-known coach in Arrigo Sacchi and Dutch superstars Ruud Gullit, Marco Van Basten and Frank Rijkaard.

The instant reward was a Champions Cup double in 1989 and 1990. The first was a 4-0 beating of Steaua Bucharest in Barcelona: Spanish TV technicians had called a strike that day so Berlusconi flew in his own company’s staff to take over so that the world could admire the team he had built.

Berlusconi took great delight in regaling journalists of how he had ignored the advice of his father who warned him that investing in football was a mug’s game and he would lose all his money. In fact Berlusconi gained, through his success in revitalising Milan, national and international status in which he revelled.

Not for Berlusconi the absent-owner status of Manchester City’s Sheikh Mansour who watched his club live for only the second time at Saturday’s Champions League Final. Berlusconi was in the Stadio Meazza for every home match and would regularly roam through the press box at halftime, his coat draped artfully around his shoulders, dispensing bonhomie, hugs and words of his own wisdom.

He was a visionary. Once he told me: “One day we may even let the fans into the stadia for free because everything will be on television but we need the fans because they are part of the show, they provide the atmosphere. They are the lifeblood of our game.”

Berlusconi led the big clubs’ challenge to UEFA by commissioning the Media Partners agency to draw up the first serious proposals for a European super league. That ultimately bounced the European federation into converting the old European Cup into the cash-cow Champions League of today.

Milan, under Berlusconi, won five European Cups, as well as eight Italian league titles. In 2017, he sold the club to Chinese investors for €740m but lately returned to the sport by buying into his ‘local’ Monza.

The popularity and profile Berlusconi gained enabled him to expand his Fininvest business empire, capitalise on the commercial and satellite TV revolution and bounce on into national politics. He even ‘kidnapped’ the ‘Forza Italia’ exhortation to label the political party which was his vehicle to his spells as Prime Minister.

Sportswashing? Deploying football to fuel his corporate ambitions? Berlusconi was there long before the Gulf nation states even thought of throwing their petro-dollars into the ring.

Berlusconi’s last spell as prime minister ended in an ignominious exit as the Eurozone crisis threatened Italy and scandals surrounding his ‘bunga-bunga’ sex parties and Mediaset tax fraud trials undermined whatever fragments remained of his professional and personal credibility.

But football will remember him.

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