The European Super League: different names, same plot

Silvio Berlusconi, some 30 years ago, sat in the boardroom of his grand villa at Arcore outside Milan and expounded for World Soccer and this writer exactly how the big clubs were about to take over international football.

For Berlusconi, international football was moribund, a curiosity only for the history books. Tomorrow belonged to him and his like: rich owners of both their clubs and the burgeoning new world of cash-rich commercial television, which had pushed state broadcasters into penurious retreat.

Milan were then the finest team in the world: Franco Baresi, Ruud Gullit, Marco van Basten, Frank Rijkaard, et al. But the players aged, titles were lost and with it Berlusconi’s enthusiasm for his toy. Football had served its purpose as a platform for grander ambitions that secured