Soccer Italy’s Berlusconi promises prostitutes if Monza’s players win

ROME, Dec 14 (Reuters) – (Editor’s note: Offensive language in third paragraph)

Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi told the players of his Monza soccer team that he would bring prostitutes into their dressing room if they managed to beat Serie A’s top rivals again, a video posted on social media showed on Wednesday.

Berlusconi, who often uses colorful language, was accused in 2011 of having sex with an underage prostitute at one of his infamous Bunga Bunga parties. He was acquitted on appeal in 2015 after a judge ruled he had not known she was a minor.

“I told the guys… now you play Milan, Juventus. If you beat one of these top teams, I’ll bring a busload of whores to the dressing room,” Berlusconi, 86, said in a video taken from Tuesday’s Christmas dinner with Monza’s players.

Daniela Sbrollini, a female senator from the centrist opposition Italia Viva party, called it “Berlusconi’s usual misogynistic language: a joke in bad taste that leaves you speechless”.

Monza were promoted to Serie A for the first time last season, beating Juventus in September. They face Inter and Juventus again in January and face Berlusconi’s old club AC Milan in February.

Berlusconi, who owned AC Milan for three decades, bought Monza in 2018. They are currently 14th in the 20-team league.

Once the most dominant figure in Italian politics, Berlusconi is now less present due to health problems and the declining popularity of his Forza Italia party, a junior member of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s ruling right-wing coalition.

Reporting by Angelo Amante and Alvise Armellini, editing by Crispian Balmer

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