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Both Inter Milan and AC Milan have announced deals for separate sites on Milan’s outskirts in recent weeks, which could provide both clubs with new stadiums.
The AJ understands that one of those stadiums would be for Inter in the city’s Rozzano neighbourhood and would be drawn up Populous – the practice behind a scheme to demolish the old San Siro and build a new ground for both clubs on neighbouring land.
Meanwhile, a separate stadium for AC Milan could be built in San Donato to designs by US practice Manica Architecture, according to website The Stadium Business.
The move to secure land rights away from the San Siro follows a years-long delay to the joint scheme, which Populous was appointed to design in 2021. The decisions to look elsewhere come ahead of a landmark decision on the San Siro itself.
As Italian sports website Calcio Mercato reported on Thursday last week (4 August), Lombardy’s superintendent for cultural heritage, Emanuela Carpani, has signalled that protected status would be granted to parts of the existing San Siro stadium, putting another nail in the coffin of Populous’s ambitious Cathedral design, which would have flattened most of the old structure.
This protection would kick in from 2025, when the second and third tiers will turn 70 years old, meaning it could only be retrofitted and not pulled down.
The city of Milan was reported, by Sky Sport Italia, as saying the protection would have ‘serious consequences’ and ‘greatly reduce the chances that the teams will remain in Milan with a new facility’.
Populous beat US-Italian consortium Manica/Sportium to the job to design a new stadium after both clubs announced plans to overhaul the San Siro, formally known as the Stadio Giuseppe Meazza, in 2019.
Populous’s scheme would retain just one of the existing stadium’s iconic spiral staircases and create a new pedestrian-only district around the stadium, including 110,000m² of green space covering 40 per cent of the site. All surface car parking would be moved underground.
The design of the stadium, billed as a ‘ground-breaking arena in terms of innovation and sustainability’, was reportedly ‘inspired by two of the most notorious buildings of the city: the Duomo di Milano and the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele’.
Speaking in January, Italy’s undersecretary for culture, Vittorio Sgarbi, told Italian publication Corriere della Sera that an injunction would be granted against the demolition of the San Siro, which has been planned for 2024, 70 years after the major post-war extension of the famous ground.
Demolishing the San Siro has proven controversial since it was announced four years ago, with architects, environmental groups and football fans all calling out the proposals.
AC Milan has played at the San Siro since it was built in 1925 and has shared it with Inter since 1947.
In the 1950s, 19 external pedestrian ramps were added to the ground. Later, 11 concrete cylindrical towers (designed by Ragazzi and Partners) were installed as part of a major overhaul ahead of Italy’s 1990 World Cup tournament.
Sketch of San Siro stadium by Ragazzi and Partners (1990)
A feasibility report prepared by the clubs, and presented to the municipality in July 2019, outlined several reasons why they did not want to reuse the current ground. They warned that any ‘intervention on the existing structure would be extremely invasive, radically changing those elements of identity that some conservative supporters claim’.
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