‘A bus full of w*****’ – Monza owner and former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi offers the team sex workers in the dressing room if they beat AC Milan and Juventus in 2023

Monza president Silvio Berlusconi has come under fire after promising his team of sex workers if he beat Juventus and AC Milan in 2023.

Italy’s four-time prime minister made the promise at the team’s Christmas dinner on Wednesday.

Getty

Currently sitting 14th in their debut season in Serie A, the Biancorossi are a healthy nine points above the bottom three.

And if there was any extra motivation for them to avoid relegation, Berlusconi told his players he would bring a “bus full” of prostitutes into the locker room if they beat two of the country’s top clubs.

Quoted by Football Italia, said: “We have found a new coach [Raffaele Palladino]who was part of our youth team, he is good, smart, kind and able to stimulate [motivate] our guys.

“I decided to add extra stimulation.

“So I told the guys you’ll be up against Milan, Juventus etc, so if you beat one of those big teams I’ll have you greeted in the locker room by a bus full of w*****s. “

While the players reportedly burst out laughing, Senator Daniela Sbrollini didn’t see the funny side as she called it “misogynistic Berlusconi language”.

Getty

She added that it was “a speechless joke in bad taste”.

Berlusconi has since taken Twitter to respond to his comments, where he said his joke was just an incentive for his team to perform well after the international break.

He posted: “I frankly did not think, and I doubt anyone could imagine, that a simple ‘locker room conversation’ comment which was a joke and clearly paradoxical, that I said to my Monza players , could elicit responses as malicious as they are trivial and unrealistic.

“I am sorry for these criticisms.

Getty

“Perhaps it is their utter lack of humor that makes them so sad and also so gratuitously mean in attacking those they consider enemies.

“But it’s Christmas. So I wish them all the best too.

Berlusconi has had his fair share of bad press in the past, with his political career plagued by corruption and sex scandals.

He was forced to resign as Prime Minister in 2011 following his ‘bunga-bunga’ parties.

In a major boost for Monza, Pablo Mari, on loan from Arsenal, is back in training after his October stabbing.

The Spanish centre-back was stabbed in a frenzied knife attack at a Carrefour supermarket, which left one person dead.