“Closing.” That English word has dominated the Italian sports pages for more than two years now: seven letters that became a shorthand for the day when Silvio Berlusconi would sell Milan. A good many people doubted it would ever arrive. The man they call Il Cavaliere was thought too proud to relinquish his favourite plaything: a football club that not so long ago billed itself as “the most titled in the world”.
Owning Milan had granted Berlusconi not only the chance to demonstrate his self-touted sporting acumen but important social and political capital as well. Was he really prepared to let all that go? Successive failed takeovers made it easy to believe he might not be.
Related: Internazionale 2-2 Milan: Serie A – as it happened
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