In 30 years Fininvest, the company owned by Silvio Berlusconi, has pumped €820 million into Milan. The announcement late last week that he had finally agreed to sell his beloved club to a Chinese consortium, brings an end to one of the more colourful and successful relationships in Italian football.
 

Back in 1986, the media tycoon purchased the rossoneri from Giuseppe Farina for the equivalent of €13.4 million.  In his very first season at the helm, a 50-year-old Berlusconi pumped the equivalent of €21.3 million into the club securing some of the world’s most exciting talent to try to take Milan back to the top of European football. Fininvest’s last set of accounts for the year ending 31 December 2015, showed that the company had invested €150 million in the club; a record in the Berlusconi era. This was due to a lack of Champions League football and the want to sign top players of the calibre of Bacca and Romagnoli.  

In his time as club patron, Berlusconi has seen Milan win 28 trophies but only three times during his reign, has the club recorded an end of year profit; in 1990-91, 1999-2000 and in 2006. In the last two years of his tenure, there has been a total deficit of €180 million, a figure that has prompted the 79-year-old to finally relinquish his reign.
 

The club’s top three signings during the Berlusconi era are Alessandro Nesta, who arrived from Lazio in 2002 for €31 million (revalued at €39 million in 2016), Filippo Inzaghi from Juventus for €35 million (€46 million) in 2001 and top of the tree, Rui Costa from Fiorentina in 2001 for €42 million (€56 million). Fininvest will now receive €520 million from the Chinese consortium that will formally take charge at the end of the year, the other €220 million having to be used to pay-off the club’s spiralling debts.

Steve Mitchell @barafundler