Silvio Berlusconi's great Milan a template for today's political football

GLORY DAYS: Silvio Berlusconi poses with AC Milan players in 2006. Pic: Giuseppe Cacace/AFP via Getty Images

"Today’s sadness doesn’t erase the happy moments spent together,” read Carlo Ancelotti’s tribute to Silvio Berlusconi, who died on Monday. “There remains infinite gratitude to the president, but above all to an ironic, loyal, intelligent, sincere man, fundamental in my adventure as a football player first, and then as a coach. Thank you President.” 

Within football, as the depth of tributes that poured in from the Italian game’s leading figures show, Berlusconi’s golden era is remembered as a time of progression and modernisation, rather different perhaps to that within political spheres. In many senses, “Don Silvio” was good for football but the game was good to him, too, providing a launch pad for wider ambitions.