Red tapism ‘eroding’ Italy stadia setup

Article posted by Coliseum, November 27^th, 2024

Image: San Siro, Jose Luis Hidalgo R., CC BY 2.0

The never-ending saga of the San Siro Stadium continues. As per a report of the Italian Revenue Agency, the City Council of Milan has sent out a directive which states that the Serie A clubs AC Milan and Inter Milan will have to pay a total of €255m to buy their home ground – the San Siro Stadium in Milan, Italy, and the areas skirting it.

A top Minister has lamented that the stadium infrastructure in Italy leaves a lot to be desired due to “political interferences and too much of red tapism”.

‘sempremilan.com’ stated that several reports have been doing the rounds in the last few months as regards the possibility of building a new stadium in the San Siro district of Milan in the last few months. The Mayor of Milan, Beppe Sala, is working overtime to ensure that the above top-flights stay within the City limits.

Rome (Italy)-based the Italian Revenue Agency is the Italian Governmental agency that enforces the financial code of Italy and collects taxes and revenue.

The AC Milan, or simply Milan, is an Italian professional football club based in Milan, Lombardy (Italy). Founded in 1899, the club competes in the Serie A, the top tier of Italian football.

The Inter Milan, or simply Inter, is an Italian professional football club based in Milan, Lombardy (Italy). Inter is the only Italian side to have always competed in the top flight of Italian football – Serie A – since its debut in 1909.

The San Siro Stadium is a football stadium in the San Siro district of Milan, Italy. It has a seating capacity of 80,018 making it the largest stadium in Italy and one of the largest stadiums in Europe. It is the home stadium of the City’s principal professional football clubs – the AC Milan and the Inter Milan – who share an intense rivalry. The San Siro Stadium is also known as the Giuseppe Meazza Stadium.

The Italian Revenue Agency report stated that Milan and Inter would have to pay a total of €196m to buy the stadium and its surrounding areas. In addition to this, they would also have to pay €59m to the City Council to carry out the urbanization works in the area.

‘sempremilan.com’ further stated that as such, the total cost would stand at €255m. And this is the cost even before a new stadium has been built! The cost of building a new facility depends on whether Milan and Inter intend to build a completely new venue or is open to the idea of totally redeveloping the San Siro Stadium.

While the above exercise is moving forward, both Milan and Inter are under no obligation to proceed with the San Siro Stadium project if the AC Milan thinks that their 70,000-seat stadium in San Donato suits them better and so with the Inter Milan if they feel that their 70,000-capacity Rozzano arena plans cut ice.

Straight Talk

‘Football Italia’ stated that mincing no words the Minister for Sport and Youth in Italy Andrea Abodi stated that it is “mortifying but true” that it is “impossible to build new stadiums in Italy and even though a major event like the EURO 2032 will be held in the country still there is no concrete policy in place to build spiffy venues”.

The 2032 Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) European Football Championship, commonly referred to as UEFA EURO 2032, or simply EURO 2032, will be the 19th UEFA European Championship, the quadrennial international football championship organized by the UEFA for the senior men’s national teams of its member associations. Italy and Turkey will host the tournament which is scheduled to take place from June 4^th-July 4^th, 2032.

Nyon (Switzerland)-based the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) is one of six continental bodies of governance in association football. It governs football, futsal and beach football in Europe and the transcontinental countries of Turkey, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Kazakhstan as well as the West Asian countries of Cyprus, Armenia and Israel. The UEFA consists of 55 national association members. Since 2022, due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the FIFA and UEFA suspended all Russian national teams and clubs from any FIFA and UEFA competitions.

‘Football Italia’ further stated that the last time several arenas in Italy was totally revamped was when the European country hosted the 1990 World Cup and few of those stadia are now in a totally dilapidated state.

Overdose of red tapism and political interference is driving the venue operators up the wall and these two factors are majorly coming in the way of building new venues in Italy. Even the top-notch clubs like the AC Milan, the Inter Milan, the AS Roma, the SS Lazio, the SSC Napoli, and the Fiorentina are tearing their hair apart over the huge bureaucratic hurdles.

Italy is jointly hosting the EURO 2032 with Turkey as the former could not assure the UEFA that they would be able to make available enough state-of-the-art stadia for the showcase event.

Abodi is frustrated that even though Italy will be holding half the number of EURO 2032 fixtures still the country is in a race against time to put in place a sleek-smart infrastructure.

Concluded Abodi, “For EURO 2032, we need to name five or six stadiums by October 2026 and then open the venues’ construction work by April 2027. We are hugely lagging behind. There is no time to hold meetings but now is the time to get into action.”

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