Inter’s crushing victory was built on solid foundations and excellent signings but many critics underlined the lack of Italian players in the Inter squad. The only Italian to play regularly was Marco Materazzi – who continued his World Cup form – while the hero of Germany Fabio Grosso lost his place early on and played a bit-part role. Despite two championships in a row, Moratti’s team would have to prove themselves once again against all-comers. They finished with a record points total, having played 38, won 30, drawn 7 and lost just 1 game. It was difficult not to argue that they had ‘killed’ the championship, but Juventus were on the horizon, and the next season would reveal if a new Grande Inter really had been born.
During the 1980s Inter’s long-term decline – as a big club without the ability to win trophies – was masked for a time by the disasters which befell Milan. For the first six years of the 1980s, Inter fans gloried in Milan’s fate – which included a relegation to Serie B after a betting scandal, a president on the run from justice, and another relegation, this time after a terrible season. Inter lorded it over their rivals throughout this period. For a time, the butt of all the jokes were the red-andblacks, not Inter. And then Berlusconi came along.
Milan. From humiliation to domination
The modern history of Milan can now be written only with reference to a key moment: 20 February 1986. Milan had just spent their second season in four years in Serie B. The team had been rocked by financial and on-the-pitch scandals, and was up for sale. In stepped a short, balding, grinning multi-millionaire, who had made his name and his fortune in the building trade, and then as Italy’s first private television mogul. Silvio Berlusconi had been born in Milan in 1936, and many claim that he was an Inter fan in his youth. He denies this (of course) but doubts remain. In any case, under Berlusconi, Milan’s success story has been dramatic: twenty-one years, seven scudetti and, above all, five European Cups. In that time, Inter have won three championships (and one of these was ‘awarded’) and two UEFA Cups. There is no comparison.
In May 2007 Milan beat Liverpool in Athens to avenge the traumatic defeat in Istanbul in 2004 and take their fifth European Cup. Once again, they had upstaged their bitter rivals. Milan fans took to the streets again, filling Piazza Duomo and clambering onto trams, buses and scooters. In the dressing room in Greece, Milan’s players made elegant reference to Inter’s championship win that year as they sang, ‘You can stick the scudetto up your arse.’ Back in Milan, the same slogan was displayed by the players on the team coach, causing a diplomatic incident. Berlusconi looked on, his famous smile as broad as ever.
Milan had had great teams before Berlusconi. The 1950s saw the club win four championships in ten years, with the legendary Swedish threesome – Gren, Nordahl and Liedholm – and a defence built around Paolo Maldini’s father, Cesare. Later the goalscoring prowess of José Altafini was allied to the silky skills of Uruguayan midfielder Schiaffino. By 1960–1961, manager Nereo Rocco had taken over. Under Rocco, with Gianni Rivera in midfield, Milan won two championships and two European Cups in the 1960s.
The 1970s were a time of frustration as three second-place finishes led to innumerable arguments with the referees. A memorable last-day collapse at Verona handed a title to Juventus. Ten years without a scudetto was an eternity for Milan, and they finally won their first gold star – awarded for ten championships – in 1979, Rivera’s last season. By that time, the team was transformed again and Franco Baresi was developing into a young star at the back. Yet disaster was soon to befall the club as betting and financial scandals and bad management led to two humiliating years in Serie B. A long period of mid-table obscurity followed, as the team rebuilt, slowly. Then, in 1986, Berlusconi arrived. Within a year he had bought the best three foreigners to play in Italy – together – in modern times – Gullit, Van Basten and Rijkaard. A number of brilliant young stars came through the ranks – with Paolo Maldini as the pick of the bunch. Milan were unstoppable for the next ten years, only dipping with the natural decline of that squad in the late 1990s. Berlusconi’s media and political power developed Milan into a world-famous business, and the influence of TV reinforced an oligarchy that excluded smaller teams. Some commentators have seen this northern big-city supremacy as something entirely new, although the Milanese and Turinese clubs have (almost) always dominated modern Italian football, apart from some brief and short-lived provincial or southern victories in the 1970s and 1980s.
Most Milan fans adored Berlusconi, yet some experienced the success story of their politician-president in a schizophrenic fashion, unable to separate their hatred for the politician from their admiration for the football president. Sometimes, hard-core fans claimed that he was neglecting his footballing commitments for political reasons, but Berlusconi always made sure he turned up at the stadium, and often interfered in tactical and transfer decisions. He was well aware of the power that AC Milan gave him on the national stage, and the ways in which the club’s triumphs naturally helped his personal fortunes in other spheres. With three national channels under his control, the product called ‘Milan’ was given hours and hours of free advertising and promotion, creating legions of new, young Milan fans ready to invest time and money in their support for their club and, often, for that club’s president in his many other careers. The club and its president were – as he had hoped – almost symbiotic. Of course, this could work both ways, and Berlusconi was furious when his team lost key matches. Football, when it came to Milan in the 1990s and beyond, was far more than just a game.
Rome. Occasional football capital
Roma: ‘Look up to the skies. Only the sky is bigger than you.’ Lazio (reply): ‘You’re right. It’s blue and white.’ (Lazio’s colours)
(Fan banners, circa 2001)
Unlike Milan or Turin, Rome’s two clubs do not have huge followings outside of their city, or its immediate province. Lazio fans are seen as largely hailing from the province of Rome or the towns around the capital, whilst Roma fans are from the city itself. Unlike in Milan or Turin, being a fan in the capital is thus a territorial question. Certain zones in the city are Roma zones – Testaccio (where the Roma stadium once was), San Lorenzo, Garbatella. When Roma won their third championship in 2003, these areas were festooned with yellow-and-red flags, graffiti and murals, many of which can still be seen.
AS Roma was formed in 1927 after pressure from the Fascist Party led to the fusion of three Rome clubs into one (the three teams were L’Alba, La Roman and La Fortitudo). The only team that resisted the call was Lazio, who have a much longer history than their hated city rivals. This manoeuvre also led to a historic imbalance in the fan-bases of the two clubs. Roma have always had far more fans than Lazio. Neither club has ever really challenged the sustained dominance of the northern cities’ clubs. Despite their financial clout, star players and passionate following, Lazio and Roma have only won five championships between them. Lazio triumphed in the early 1970s and again in 2000. Roma won in 1943, 1983 and 2001.
Lazio became an important club, for the first time, in the 1930s – although they had challenged for early championships in 1913 and 1914. Star striker Silvio Piola arrived at the club in 1934 and helped the team towards a series of good finishes in that decade. Benito Mussolini, it is often said, was a Lazio fan but it is not clear whether the tendency of the club’s followers towards the politics of the extreme right began under the regime itself. After the war, Lazio veered between Serie A and Serie B, and only made a serious challenge for the scudetto in 1972–1974, when they won one championship and finished second and third. That crazy team – with its scandals, violence and madcap behaviour – broke up quickly amid recrimination (as top scorer