Milan mia, take me away /it’s so cold and disgust and I can’t take it anymore /let’s make a change, take that little money /that little celebrity /but give me my seventeenth century back /my twenty years and a girl you know /Milan sorry, I was joking /lights in San Siro will no longer light on it. So he sang Roberto Vecchioni in 19, publishing his perhaps more well -known success in San Siro in 1971.
After a night of Marathon in the City Council of Milan, between 29 and 30 September 2025, with a division of NO and yes politically transversal, and with the exit from the Forza Italia classroom which, although not voting yes, has unbalanced the legal number of votes valid in favor of the yes, The resolution that has decided that the moment in which lights at San Siro will no longer turn on, has not begins with 20 votes against and 24 favorable. Not in the stadium as we know it.
The amendments passed between anti -mafia and inclusiveness
Was In fact, the sale voted, for 197 million euros in the stadium to the two Milan and Inter companies of which in recent decades the stadium has been the housewitness of defeats and triumphs. Among the few amendments approved during the session, the one that binds the buyers to contact the prefecture “white list” for the execution of the works and the supply of services, collecting an appeal widespread in recent days by Nando Dalla Chiesa, president of the Committee for the legality and anti -mafia of the Municipality. Others concern Environmental sustainability and inclusiveness: One plans to allocate 14 million euros to green, another asks for particular attention to inclusion in the new stadium that will rise in the Parco dei Capitani near via Tesio.
The history of the “football scale”: 100 years in 2026
Entitled in 1980 to Peppin Meazza with a resolution of the city council, the first to mark a goal, The San Siro stadium was born in 1926, initially owned by Milan, wanted by the president of Milan, Piero Pirelli, in 1925, on the English model, without athletic track. The original project of the engineer Alberto Cugini and the architect Ulysses Stacchini had a capacity of 35 thousand spectators. Purchased by the Municipality of Milan in 1934, after the 1934 World Cup which hosted the semifinal, from the 1947/48 championship it also hosts the housewives of Inter Which had played the civic arena to the civic arena to 55 thousand seats, conquering the second ring completed in November 1955.
In the 1960s with the successes of AC Milan by Nereo Rocco and those of the Inter of the magician Helenio Herrera, he earned the fame of Scala del Calcio, who came to the apex in the era of the Bari brothers to tighten his hand in the derby between the Milan Milan and the Inter of the Germans.
In 1990 on the occasion of Italia 90 the stadium suffered a new profound renewal signed by the architects Giancarlo Ragazzi, Enrico Hoffer and the engineer Leo Finzi, and earns the third ring that brings it to 85,700 seats.
What will be its future
From the resolution voted in the City Council, (and that has averted the risk that football would go to the city disintegrating San Siro and its history in a future of two stadiums, one per team in the suburbs), will arise according to the plans a different future, in which Only the South Curve as a place of collective memory will remain standing of the old stadium, destined to host the museums of the teams and their offices. The rest will be shot down to make room for a modern 71,500 -seater system, with attached parking lots, shops, restaurants and even luxury hotels.
The project entrusted to the International Studies of Architecture Foster + Partners and Manica, led respectively by Lord Norman Foster and David Manica. In the dossier of almost three hundred pages that in recent months Inter and Milan have presented to the Municipality of Milan there is talk of an investment of about 1.2 billion euros, 700 million only for the new plant. Posted in a recasestification project of the neighborhood of about 281 thousand square meters: the new stadium will have two large rings, Historical memory of the project of the 1950s, with an inclination designed to guarantee optimal visibility from every sector.
The structure will be built on a podium that will act as access for the fans. In days without games, the area will become a large integrated square with the surrounding park, whose heart should be a fan zone, a space dedicated to fans who will also serve without games from a meeting place for temporary events. All around a citadel of sport: museum, club shops, offices, hotels, a part dedicated to commercial and entertainment, refreshment and green areas and obviously the refunctional part of San Siro.
Because we had to run
If it had been late would have been impossible, for technical-burocratic times, to conclude the actual sale by 10 November, the Tagliola date within which the bond of the Superintendency would take place that would have put the second ring under protectingcomplicating the path of demolition that at that point would have requested the opinion of the Superintendency, greatly lengthening the times. The bond is in fact a bureaucratic automatism that applies to public goods 70 years after the construction, in this case the second ring of the stadium completed in November 1955.
This point had been contested by the yes Committee, supported by citizens against the new project and favorable instead of a renovation of the old stadium, but the TAR has given reason to the interpretation of the administration confirming the terms of the automatic shot of the bond.
The feasibility studies of the in the meantime, simple renovation had grossed the no of the two companies interested in the purchase for the costs that are too high and for the risks of lengthening the times connected to the constraints already present on the oldest parts.
Because San Siro cannot remain as it is
The need to quickly imagine a different future has become urgent starting from July 2025, when UEFA in the 11th of the scheduled meetings to take stock of the European 2032, assigned to the organization of Italy and Turkey, had decreed for the current San Siro the lack of the requirements required to host matches, with the result that in the absence of a new Milan project would have remained outside the European Championship. In particular San Siro had been rejected on 11 of the 22 requirements for the suitability necessary to host an UEFA competition. Negative votes on convenience of the viewer, safety, accessibility and sustainability, the side of the commercial aspects and partner Hospitality is also weak.
For the same reason on September 24, UEFA with an official press release had revoked San Siro the assignment (Sub Judice) of the Champions League final 2026-27. “Since the Municipality,” wrote the maximum European football body, “cannot guarantee that the stadium will not be the subject of work in 2027, it was decided not to assign the final to Milan and to reopen the procedure for the assignment of an appropriate location, with the choice that will probably take place between May and June 2025”.
Hence the need to rewrite the future in order not to make the football scale back to the provincial theater relegated. The time to host the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games of Milan Cortina on February 6, 2026 and the work for the new era will begin, on which as always in these cases there will be unknown.
