Silvio Berlusconi and the “bad apple” in his team

Wednesday, January 30, 2013. After being slammed as “bad apple” by AC Milan's owner Silvio Berlusconi only a couple of weeks before, footballer Mario Balotelli wears the red-and-black shirt for the first time.

Super Mario Balotelli

Former striker of Inter Milan and Manchester City and Italian National football team's player Mario Balotelli is  travelling to Milan today, as hundreds of texts and tweets anticipated in the previous days.

A jubilant Barbara Berlusconi – member of AC Milan's board of directors and Silvio Berlusconi's daughter – declared to Italian news agency ANSA how the team could manage to make a major hit by acquiring from British football club Manchester City the talented Mario Balotelli, while her father – in mid January – said that the young striker was a “rotten apple” (alluding to the young talent's sometimes problematic behaviour) who could "infect any group or team, even AC Milan" and there was no interest in him.

Silvio: "Rotten apple"

In Silvio's words: "No one from my club has held any talks with him, and neither [Vice Executive President and CEO Adriano] Galliani nor I has identified him as a transfer target.". The AC Milan's management seemed also wary about spending 20 million euro (£17.2m or $27m) in order to sign the player of Ghanaian descent (here's the Mario's page on Wikipedia).

Well, in the world of football it is a widespread (and somehow understandable) practice to deny any interest in players when a negotiation is on course, but did Silvio Berlusconi really have the necessity to call Mario a “rotten apple” and say that he is prone to "infect" his team, only in order to apologise the day after?

Barbara: "Major hit"

Sometimes it looks like if the former prime minister of Italy just love to say things that well soon need any apology, perhaps in order to get exposure to the media twice: when he says something nasty or rude, and when he makes amends, playing good cop/bad cop all by himself. Have a look at Silvio's quotes, to get an idea...

Massimo Moratti - the president of AC Milan's derby rival Internazionale Milan - said to journalists that the signing of Mario "Bad Boy" Balotelli will be "useful to Berlusconi in many ways" hinting at  political motives. Forecasters state that the player's transfer might contribute to the former prime minister's People of Liberty party's polls with 2 percentage points in next month elections.

One's for sure: as you can see from the photo, Mario Balotelli's (commonly known as Super Mario, for his talent) hairstyle is not going to improve the “hair war” within the Italian football team (see our blog's article “Silvio Berlusconi and the cockscomb of the Pharaoh”).

Mario Balotelli: is he worth 400,000 votes?

Silvio Berlusconi reckons Benito Mussolini did quite well, actually, apart from those racial laws

Sunday, January 27, 2013. On the International Holocaust Remembrance Day Silvio Berlusconi finds it compelling to defend Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini's deeds, another victim of the “German power”, before taking a nap on a ceremony about the Shoah he wasn't even invited to.

Sleeping the sleep of the just?

It hasn't been the first time that Silvio Berlusconi felt like defending "poor" Mussolini, who – in the view of the former Italian prime minister – was a “benevolent leader”, who “never killed anybody” and just used to “send people on holiday”, but this time the timing seemed to be really dodgy, even for the prone-to-blunder media tycoon. 

On Sunday Silvio took part in the inauguration of a monument to the deported of the Shoah, and he must have though "what a better occasion than this one, to praise good ol' Benito?".

Silvio Berlusconi and the (Italian) clash of the century, with his nemesis Michele Santoro

Thursday, 10 January 2013. Silvio Berlusconi enters the lions den, where Michele Santoro and Marco Travaglio were looking forward to devouring the former prime minister.

Santoro and Berlusconi

Allegedly Silvio Berlusconi kicked Michele Santoro out of Italian public TV RAI, back in 2002, that's why the clash between the former prime minister and the left-wing anchorman was described as the duel of the century by many.

Silvio Berlusconi was supposed to walk out in anger, after Michele Santoro and his associate Marco Travaglio would have grilled him properly.

Almost 9 million Italians were glued to the video (one third of the audience, up to 50 per cent in the heat of the discussion), as the Santoro-team attacked on waves.

Nothing doing, the former prime minister fended off Santoro's lunges, ignored Luisella Costamagna remarks, and even returned fire to Marco Travaglio, by enlisting – written on a letter he abruptly pulled out of his pocket - ten lawsuits for defamation the journalist had lost.

Berlusconi cleansing the chair where Travaglio sat

Attacks regarding sex-scandals, Rubygate, and the paying of the 42 bunga-bunga army girls, the request of saying to the Italians he was sorry... all in vane. Silvio Berlusconi answers blending wit remarks, with shreds of statistics, smiles and provocations. And, once again, he gets away with it, and keeps on «gaining back who already voted for me, and perhaps convincing new voters», as he put it.

How to convince the Italians that the People of Liberty party is the right choice? Silvio Berlusconi's pièce de résistance is the abolition of a tax on proprieties, which yield would be – according to the former Italian prime minister – replaced by new taxes on tobaccos, spirits and gambling (the tax was introduced by Berlusconi himselft, but it's the Monti's government that made it applicable to owners of first homes).

Running out of options, Santoro also showed a video taken almost four years before (in April 2009), when Silvio Berlusconi had been keeping waiting German chancellor Angela Merkel while he was talking on the telephone (the video is available on our YouTube channel, click here> to watch it). Well, of course Silvio had an answer for that (he could have work out quite a range of replies, in four years...), but before replying to it – revealing he had been talking to Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan about a crucial topic of the summit - he said «Santoro, you're digging your own grave.».

“I'm having fun” would later declare smiling the former prime minister. Santoro – quite evidently – was not having fun, was visibly annoyed and refuse to shake hands with Silvio, at a certain stage. At least until Silvio left and he went on giggling with his cartoonist friend, Vauro Senesi, who showed the sketches he had been drawing during the programme, in what Santoro called «my communist moments.».

While enjoying his communists moments, Santoro might be an unaware supporter for Silvio, whose deficit had been reducing constantly, since the Italian politician started to show off on TV, without finding any credible opposition. So far.

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Video from our YouTube Channel: Berluschannel