For the moment The Stadio Giuseppe Meazza, better known as "San Siro" will remain.
Category
🥇
SportsTranscript
00:00Italian football's toxic love affair with money, and by extension the subsequent lack of it,
00:04has meant that Serie A as a whole has really struggled to compete with the rest of Europe.
00:08But the brilliant thing about football is that for all the financial side has seemingly become everything,
00:14sometimes teams can just push themselves well beyond merely the station of their own spending power.
00:20Thus, despite an outlay of just 50 million euros between them in the last 12 months,
00:24or about what Man City spent on Calvin Phillips on the other side of the draw,
00:28both Milan clubs have fought through to a Champions League semi-final clash,
00:33and one that might well become symbolic not just for the players or the fans, but for the San Siro as well.
00:39In all likelihood, these will be the last major European Cup knockout games to ever be played there.
00:46Put simply, if either team wants to make progression in this competition a habit once again,
00:51it'll almost certainly need to be knocked down.
00:54But why Bulldo is one of football's most iconic venues?
00:59This is the story of the final years of San Siro.
01:04The basic argument for the total destruction of Stadio Giuseppe Miazza is as follows.
01:09In order to keep up with their European competition, Milan and Inter must increase their incomes.
01:14To do this, both clubs need a new stadium.
01:17Either they demolish and rebuild at San Siro itself, or they leave and build elsewhere,
01:23in which case the current ground would almost certainly have to come down anyway.
01:27The reality is it can hardly be left standing around in a state of decay,
01:30and there would be almost no way to repurpose it.
01:33Plans to raise and replace this stadium have been circulating for years, but the same questions remain.
01:38Will they do it? Won't they do it? Why will they do it? And when?
01:41In our most recent issue, 442's Tom Ginoy travelled to Milan itself and uncovered a tale of footballing royalty and architectural majesty,
01:49of political gridlock and bureaucratic inertia, of burning mopeds and, inevitably, of Silvio Berlusconi.
01:55You can read the entire piece and of course many more in the new edition, available now from the link in the description.
02:01But the key here is this.
02:02In 2022, Milan were bought by US-based investment group Redbird Capital.
02:08The 1.2 billion euro price tag was a record for a European football club outside the Premier League,
02:15and the prospect of a new stadium, with all of its attendant money-making potential, made up a sizable part of that project.
02:21And now, the owners want to push on with what they paid so much for.
02:26Time, you see, is money.
02:28And Redbird Capital want to make money from sellable naming rights, lucrative concessions, hospitality lounges, offices, concerts and NFL games,
02:37all revenue streams of which the existing stadium offers next to none.
02:42San Siro, in its current form, is certainly not swamped with amenities.
02:46Inside and out, there is very little to be found in the way of comfort or commerce.
02:50The barren landscape that surrounds the ground is only punctured on matchdays by burger vans and people selling scarves and souvenirs.
02:56There are no cafes, no shops, no restaurants, barely anywhere for fans to congregate safely, and certainly no areas for families or children.
03:05Football as a spectator experience is virtually unrecognisable from 30 or 40 years ago,
03:11but in Milan, almost no compromises to the modern game have ever been made.
03:16To some, including fans of both clubs and tourists alike, this is what makes the stadium so important.
03:21This is why preservation as a time capsule of a different age should matter.
03:26But to the owners, this isn't a positive.
03:28This is paralysis.
03:30And one shared by the country's government after a 2020 investigation by Italian heritage authorities
03:35found no cultural or artistic reason to enforce any form of preservation on the stadium.
03:42In a story of so many lasting uncertainties, here are a selection of straightforward facts.
03:47The stadium will host the opening ceremony at the Winter Olympics in 2026.
03:52Salah's second and final term as mayor concludes in the same year, meaning Milan will have a new municipal governor.
03:59The current lease deal between the city and the two clubs, the basis for Milan and Inter's tenancy at San Siro, expires in 2030.
04:06The fact is, there are a great number of possible endings to this story.
04:10Plenty of them are plausible, but many involve a gloomy climax for the Stadio Miazza.
04:15If one thing is true, it's that nothing is settled yet, but the dark clouds are forming nonetheless over San Siro and time is not on the stadium's side.
04:23To be blunt, if you've never been, go soon, as the future of a footballing icon is hanging by an ever-thinning thread.
04:31When Inter fans dumped a moped over the railings of the San Siro's second tier in a 2001 game between themselves and Atlanta,
04:37a curious trophy appeared in the Curva Nord, a moped belonging, so the tale goes, to the opposing capo and captured in a pre-match scuffle.
04:47They would never have managed it had it not been for the stairless access provided by the stadium's iconic exterior ramps.
04:53Nowhere else in world football would this legendary terrorist story, or act of hooliganism comprising theft, arson and criminal damage, depending on your viewpoint, have been possible.
05:03And to some, that's a reason to burn the whole thing down and start again.
05:07But football is entirely defined by its stories that could only happen to one club, or to one manager, or in one rivalry, or even between the walls of one stadium.
05:19Lose those wonky and often problematic cultural touchstones, replace them with sleekly designed concrete revenue streams that appeal to everybody and nobody all at once, and you lose something of the game at the same time.
05:31And so, for fans of either Milan club, this semi-final is about so much more than the mere progression to the showpiece main event in Istanbul.
05:39It's now about the legacy, the fate, the history and the future of their very home itself, and that is a game of football that could simply only be played in San Siro.