Why AC Milan And Inter Want To Demolish San Siro Stadium
For the moment The Stadio Giuseppe Meazza, better known as "San Siro" will remain.
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00:00 Italian football's toxic love affair with money, and by extension the subsequent lack of it,
00:04 has meant that Serie A as a whole has really struggled to compete with the rest of Europe.
00:08 But the brilliant thing about football is that for all the financial sides to seemingly become
00:13 everything, sometimes teams can just push themselves well beyond merely the station
00:18 of their own spending power. Thus, despite an outlay of just 50 million euros between them
00:23 in the last 12 months, or about what Man City spent on Calvin Phillips on the other side of the draw,
00:28 both Milan clubs have fought through to a Champions League semi-final clash, and one that
00:33 might well become symbolic not just for the players or the fans, but for the San Siro as well. In all
00:39 likelihood, these will be the last major European Cup knockout games to ever be played there. Put
00:46 simply, if either team wants to make progression in this competition a habit once again, it'll
00:52 almost certainly need to be knocked down. But why Buldo is one of football's most iconic venues?
00:59 This is the story of the final years of San Siro. The basic argument for the total destruction of
01:06 Stadio Giuseppe Meazza is as follows. In order to keep up with their European competition,
01:11 Milan and Inter must increase their incomes. To do this, both clubs need a new stadium. Either
01:18 they demolish and rebuild at San Siro itself, or they leave and build elsewhere, in which case the
01:23 current ground would almost certainly have to come down anyway. The reality is it can hardly be left
01:28 standing around in a state of decay, and there would be almost no way to repurpose it. Plans to
01:33 raise and replace this stadium have been circulating for years, but the same questions remain. Will they
01:38 do it? Won't they do it? Why will they do it? And when? In our most recent issue, 442's Tom Gannoy
01:44 travelled to Milan itself and uncovered a tale of footballing royalty and architectural majesty,
01:48 of political gridlock and bureaucratic inertia, of burning mopeds, and, inevitably, of Silvio
01:54 Berlusconi. You can read the entire piece and of course many more in the new edition,
01:59 available now from the link in the description. But the key here is this. In 2022, Milan were
02:05 bought by US-based investment group Redbird Capital. The 1.2 billion euro price tag was a
02:11 record for a European football club outside the Premier League, and the prospect of a new stadium
02:16 with all of its attendant money-making potential made up a sizeable part of that project. And now,
02:22 the owners want to push on with what they paid so much for. Time, you see, is money,
02:28 and Redbird Capital want to make money from sellable naming rights, lucrative concessions,
02:33 hospitality lounges, offices, concerts and NFL games, all revenue streams of which the existing
02:39 stadium offers next to none. San Siro in its current form is certainly not swamped with
02:45 amenities. Inside and out there is very little to be found in the way of comfort or commerce. The
02:50 barren landscape that surrounds the ground is only punctured on matchdays by burger vans and people
02:55 selling scarves and souvenirs. There are no cafes, no shops, no restaurants, barely anywhere for fans
03:01 to congregate safely, and certainly no areas for families or children. Football as a spectator
03:07 experience is virtually unrecognisable from 30 or 40 years ago, but in Milan, almost no compromises
03:13 to the modern game have ever been made. To some, including fans of both clubs and tourists alike,
03:19 this is what makes the stadium so important. This is why preservation as a time capsule of
03:24 a different age should matter. But to the owners, this isn't a positive. This is paralysis, and one
03:30 shared by the country's government after a 2020 investigation by Italian heritage authorities
03:36 found no cultural or artistic reason to enforce any form of preservation on the stadium. In a story
03:43 of so many lasting uncertainties, here are a selection of straightforward facts. The stadium
03:48 will host the opening ceremony at the Winter Olympics in 2026. Salah's second and final term
03:54 as mayor concludes in the same year, meaning Milan will have a new municipal governor. The
03:59 current lease deal between the city and the two clubs, the basis for Milan and Inter's tenancy
04:03 at San Siro, expires in 2030. The fact is, there are a great number of possible endings to this
04:09 story. Plenty of them are plausible, but many involve a gloomy climax for the Stadio Miazza.
04:15 If one thing is true, it's that nothing is settled yet, but the dark clouds are forming nonetheless
04:20 over San Siro, and time is not on the stadium's side. To be blunt, if you've never been, go soon,
04:26 as the future of a footballing icon is hanging by an ever-thinning thread. When Inter fans dumped a
04:32 moped over the railings of the San Siro second tier in a 2001 game between themselves and Atlanta,
04:38 a curious trophy appeared in the Curva Nord. A moped belonging, so the tale goes, to the opposing
04:44 capo and captured in a pre-match scuffle. They would never have managed it had it not been for
04:49 the stairless access provided by the stadium's iconic exterior ramps. Nowhere else in world
04:55 football would this legendary terrorist story, or act of hooliganism comprising theft, arson and
05:00 criminal damage, depending on your viewpoint, have been possible. And to some, that's a reason to
05:05 burn the whole thing down and start again. But football is entirely defined by its stories that
05:10 could only happen to one club, or to one manager, or in one rivalry, or even between the walls of
05:18 one stadium. Lose those wonky and often problematic cultural touchstones, replace them with sleekly
05:24 designed concrete revenue streams that appeal to everybody and nobody all at once, and you lose
05:29 something of the game at the same time. And so, for fans of either Milan club, this semi-final is
05:34 about so much more than the mere progression to the showpiece main event in Istanbul. It's now
05:39 about the legacy, the fate, the history and the future of their very home itself, and that is a
05:45 game of football that could simply only be played in San Siro.
05:50 [BLANK_AUDIO]