Berlusconi Says Those Naughty Words

By: chris | April 24th, 2008

Milan owner and soon-to-be reinstalled Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has done gone and made Michel Platini fume behind closed doors by airing out his thoughts on those potential/inevitable eleven dirty letters: “SuperLeague”. Silvio certainly isn’t the first and certainly won’t be the last, but every day someone brings it up is every day we get closer to what I can only see as the inevitable. And according to the PM himself, what else would it be about? Scrilla, baby. They spend too much to see their team play in front of empty seats.

“The great sides should make their own championship. When you invest a lot in a team it’s unthinkable to make them play against a team from the provinces whose stadium, usually with a capacity for 20,000 people, is inevitably half-empty.”

“When there are great teams playing the stadiums are always full and TV audiences are massive. Only with great teams can we become protagonists in Europe again.”

(Mmmmm….ratings. What does Berlusconi own again? Oh, right.)

Anytime someone knocks a team with a small stadium which would take half the town to fill itself, something which happens fairly often, the mind automatically goes to Empoli. Sad, sad Empoli. Here they are, in the top flight in calcio coming from a town of a whole 47,000 people and they get no love because they can’t adequately fill the seats well enough. Never loved, always insufficient. Where’s the romance, people? They went to the UEFA Cup for the love of Gesu.

Back to business. There’s going to be a lot more posturing and many more threats before they get down to brass tax (Arsene, and his doppelganger The Voyeur, have been spying on proceedings to decide what angle to use next), but one of these days it’s going to come fast and furious. Maybe not soon, but someday. There’s simply too much money waiting to be plucked from ~~your pockets~~ the trees.

Of course, one must also wonder whether or not Berlusconi would be promoting a new SuperDuperMoneyMaker if his club weren’t looking destined for the Plan B, the UEFA Cup. next year. Even with all of his big bucks, I’m sure Silvio enjoys getting that fat CL check every year; and as he plans for a year potentially devoid of said check, he’s dreaming of how nice it would be for that check to be an annual foregone conclusion.

Ah well. Another proponent, another day closer.