Franco, Mussolini, and a high percentage of all modern dictators have made the link between sport and populist politics countless times. To Berlusconi’s left-wing critics, the resemblance to these tyrants is not coincidental. He is their scion. Like the Latin American caudillos, they say, he is thoroughly corrupted. At the same time he has assumed responsibility for governing Italy, he has maintained a vast business empire that profits from the state’s largess and reluctance to regulate. Predictably, when his personal interests conflict with the commonweal, he backs himself. Despite serious allegations about his own corruption, in 2003 he orchestrated the passage of legislation granting himself blanket immunity from prosecution. He has decrimi-nalized the o¤ense of false accounting, which his company is accused of committing.
His soccer dealings have the same taint. He may not be making Agnelli-like behind-the-scenes overtures to referees and politicians, but the system always looks stacked to promote his interests. In soccer, Berlusconi’s deputy at AC Milan, Adriano Galliani, has become the chairman of the Italian league—with a portfolio that includes the meting of discipline and the negotiation of television rights.
In the United States, the case against Berlusconi might be too much for the polity to tolerate. But in Italy, the electorate doesn’t penalize Berlusconi for his HOW SOCCER EXPLAINS THE NEW OLIGARCHS
conflicts of interest. This brand of corruption is too widespread to be pinned on a single man. The critics who point out his conflicts sound like hypocrites. They don’t want a world with media beholden only to journalistic truth and objectivity. They idealize the days when the Socialists and Christian Democrats each controlled one of the state-run television networks. Nobody, on either side of the spectrum, has any real interest in rationalizing government contracts, the prime vehicle for corruption.
Taking into account this consensus against reform, it’s hard to single out Berlusconi for rage. Compared to the old oligarchy’s back channels, Berlusconi manipulates in the wide-open, as he does with AC Milan’s press operation. In 2003, when he pushed the legislature to pass a law granting him blanket immunity from prosecution, Italians could follow the proceedings in their newspapers and on television. A few activists took to the streets, but only a small sliver of Italy cared.
IV.
One rainy night I met up with Tommaso Pellizzari, a young reporter with the newspaper Corriere della Sera and rabid fan of AC Milan’s fierce cross-town rival, Inter. I searched out Tommaso because he is one of the most vociferous critics of Berlusconi’s club. In 2001, he published a polemic called No Milan, modeled after Naomi Klein’s anti-globalization tract No Logo. The book is a clever, somewhat jokey, mostly rageful attack on all things Milan. It lists the ten all-time Milan play-ers he hates most—and the ten he likes most, because they aªrm the inferiority of their club.
His charming argument finishes with a counter-
intuitive flourish. In the last chapter, Pellizzari admits gratitude for Berlusconi’s ownership of his enemy. To most Inter fans, this confession would be anathema.
Berlusconi’s essentially bottomless bank accounts have financed an implacable foe. But Pellizzari cares as much about the soul and moral health of his club as he does championships. And thanks to Berlusconi’s association with AC Milan, he argues, Italians can no longer turn a blind eye to the wickedness of Milan. It has become objectively odious. Indeed, Pellizzari sees a
“boomerang e¤ect.” Italians have rallied against AC
Milan, because they see the club as a symbol of the corrupt, conservative regime.
Broadly speaking, there’s not much evidence of the boomerang arcing back toward Milan. In fact, the opposite has happened. Because of Berlusconi’s glamour players and championship trophies, Milan has developed a national following that may soon eclipse Juventus’s broad base. In certain intellectual circles, however, Milan has become just as despised as Tommaso hoped.
To illustrate this point, he took me to a bohemian theater and cultural club called Comuna Baires. Ever since Berlusconi returned to power in 2001, the Comuna Baires has formed an alliance with Inter Milan. It hosts literary evenings with the team. At its readings, foreign Inter players (from Colombia, Turkey, and so on) share the stage with writers from their home countries. After the events, Inter players, coaches, and team oªcials join pro-Inter intellectuals for dinner around a long HOW SOCCER EXPLAINS THE NEW OLIGARCHS
table in the theater’s basement. It’s the type of evening that could only happen with Italian leftists, who have been nursed on Antonio Gramsci and his theories of counter-hegemony.
The evening Tommaso and I attended Comuna
Baires, the club held a reading to honor Javier Zanetti, Inter’s Argentine captain. Everyone in the club seemed to know Tommaso. A camera crew from Inter’s cable television network stopped him for a quick interview.
Beautiful women in black stopped to kiss him on both cheeks. We dropped our coats in a cloakroom, away from the crowd. Tommaso whispered to me, “I have to warn you. These people really are communists. I don’t mean that as an exaggeration. They really are communists.” We walked out from the room and he nudged me, nodding toward a framed picture of Che Guevara that stared at us from a wooden beam.
Like any boho theater, the Baires has a ramshackle feel. The main stage is in a stark black room with risers and rickety wooden benches. The reading had been organized in the round and a row of men and women in tiny spectacles surrounded Zanetti. He sat in front of a microphone at a table, draped with cloth the colors of Inter’s jersey. Waiting for the program to begin, he shifted in his seat.
The theater’s director emceed the evening. A middle-aged man in an untucked linen shirt, he warmed up the
