Political Football: Silvio Berlusconi
Updated on 07 April 2008
With this week's Italian elections promising a third term as prime minister for Silvio Berlusconi, Simon Kuper nominates him president of our Political Football XI.
On January 26, 1994, Silvio Berlusconi gave the most important speech in the intertwined history of football and politics.
Speaking from his study, Italy's richest man explained why he was entering politics. "I have chosen to take the field," he said on several Italian television channels at once, "because I don't want to live in an illiberal country, governed by immature forces."
As Paddy Agnew notes in his book on Italian football, the key phrase is "taking the field". Berlusconi, owner of AC Milan, was co-opting the language of football. Politicians from Benito Mussolini to Nelson Mandela had used the game, but Berlusconi became the world's first football politician.
That started a trend, of which he himself may become the next beneficiary: in the Italian elections of 13 and 14 April, he is expected to become prime minister for the third time. It's enough for us to name him president of our political football XI.
Forza Berlusconi
Berlusconi first dabbled with football way back in 1980, when his TV channel bought the Italian rights to the "Mundialito" tournament for past world champions in Uruguay. Its success helped him appreciate that in Italy, you can build an empire on football.
'Berlusconi's advisers came to the conclusion that the only language that unites Italians was that to do with football.'John Foot
Though he is supposedly an Inter fan - indeed, he once tried to buy the club - in 1986 he took over their rivals Milan. At the time, they were still recovering from a bribery scandal, but Berlusconi soon made them champions of Europe. By 1994, when the Italian state was mired in its own bribery scandal, "Tangentopoli", he pledged to do the same for Italy.
Voters were sick of the corrupt traditional political parties, and so Berlusconi founded Forza Italia, a party named after a football chant. ("Would you vote for a party named after a football chant?" I asked a Harvard political scientist. He thought for a bit. "Yeah, probably," he said.) Berlusconi named his candidates "azzurri", like the players in Italy's national team, and called his local parties "clubs".
Another salute (Reuters)
None of this was an accident. John Foot writes in his history of Italian football: "After long research, Berlusconi's advisers came to the conclusion that the only language that unites Italians was that to do with football. Half the electorate are self-confessed fans, after all."
Berlusconi became prime minister (for seven months), pledging "to make Italy like Milan". No wonder he polled strongly among Milan fans. Once, when a Milanese derby was scheduled for election day, he cancelled it, presumably to ensure that more of his supporters would go and vote.
The correlation between Milan and Forza Italia only grew, because some Milan supporters who detested the politician Berlusconi found other teams.
The Inter fan Tommaso Pellizzari argued in his hilarious book No Milan: "If at first the Milan of Berlusconi was subjectively odious (that is, odious to us Interisti and to others scattered throughout Italy), thanks to the presidentissimo, it has often succeeded in becoming objectively odious, i.e., independently of the team you support."
Berlusconi agogo
From 2001 to 2006 Berlusconi was again prime minister. That gave him control of the three strategic heights of Italian life: politics, football and bad television.
Italy became a country where Berlusconi voters and Berlusconi haters watched Berlusconi's team thump teams subsidised by Berlusconi's government on Berlusconi's pay channels, in a league run by Berlusconi's right-hand man, Adriano Galliani, before watching the highlights on Berlusconi's free channel.
The only thing Berlusconi didn't do as prime minister was carry out his own government's laws for making stadiums safer.
Perhaps the ultimate symbol of Berlusconismo was the decoder that invaded Italian homes. It was needed to receive Berlusconi's pay channels. Unfortunately, few people initially bothered buying one and so each purchaser was given a nice tax rebate by Berlusconi's government.
Email us your Political Football suggestions
Simon Kuper is in the process of nominating his Political Football First XI - 11 footballers whose lives have acquired a dimension outside the sport they play.
But we want to know who you would include. It doesn't have to be an entire team (although that would be fascinating) - just a player for whom life has meant more than a mansion in Belgravia and a fleet of 4x4s.
Email your suggestions to Channel 4 News by clicking here.
Calcio is forever
Admittedly all this was extreme. In political football as in football itself, Italy is world champion. However, other countries have begun to follow. The breakdown of traditional political parties that occurred in Italy in the early 1990s was soon repeated elsewhere.
After the cold war, old ideological divides ceased to matter. Voters no longer inherited their parties from their parents. As downmarket TV grew, it provided people with new heroes: in particular sportsmen and club owners.
In the US, the managing director of the Texas Rangers baseball club became a famous enough face to run for governor of Texas. We all know where George W Bush went next.
Did Berlusconi use football to get into politics, or is his politics a sideline to his role in football?
The former athletes Jesse Ventura and Arnold Schwarzenegger became state governors. In Liberia, where traditional politicians had lost even more credibility than in Italy, the footballer George Weah was almost elected president in 2005 (Weah also makes our political footballers' XI). In Argentina last December, the president of Boca Juniors, Mauricio Macri, became mayor of Buenos Aires. Next step, the presidency?
Only one question remains about Berlusconi. Did he use football to get into politics, or is his politics simply a sideline to his much more significant role in football? In Italy, after all, politicians come and go but calcio is forever.
Foot writes: "Perhaps Silvio the football president exercised even more ideological power over his subjects than he did as a politician."
Channel 4 News Political Football XI (so far)
Defence Franz Beckenbauer
Midfield Walter Tull, Neil Lennon, Diego Maradona, Zvonomir Boban
Forwards Matthias Sindelar, George Weah, Paolo Di Canio
President Silvio Berlusconi
Sources
- Paddy Agnew, Forza Italia: A Journey in Search of Italy and its Football (Ebury Press)
- John Foot, Calcio: A History of Italian Football (Fourth Estate)
- Tommaso Pellizzari, No Milan: Guide teorica e pratica all'antimilanismo (per interisti ma non solo) (Limina)
