Inter and AC Milan are in talks over a possible renovation of the San Siro as two of Italian football’s giants eye a move away from the iconic stadium, the city of Milan said on Thursday.
The city of Milan, Italy’s economic capital, said that mayor Giuseppe Sala met with AC Milan president Paolo Scaroni and Alessandro Antonello, Inter’s corporate CEO, “to discuss the feasibility of renovating the San Siro”.
Italian construction group WeBuild will, added the city, produce within three months a feasibility study into the works needed.
Meanwhile the two teams will produce guidelines for “a possibile renovation that results in a more modern and efficient stadium”.
Both Inter and AC Milan have insisted that the San Siro, which is owned by the city of Milan, become the property of the two clubs.
The city also said that the clubs want protection from financial losses and insist that any works fit in with the schedule of matches and other events, while the area surrounding the stadium could also be redeveloped.
Sala has repeatedly expressed worry about what will happen to the San Siro, nicknamed ‘football’s La Scala’ if Inter and AC Milan do build new stadiums on other sites.
Both clubs, who between them have been crowned European champions 10 times, have begun the process of moving outside Milan after an initial project to knock down the San Siro and build a new stadium on the same land collapsed last year.
Opposition to that project, which also included a host of new construction near the proposed new ground, from local and national politicians extended the already long bureaucratic procedures needed for approval.
Earlier this month AC Milan bought land in suburb San Donato Milanese as part of a plan to move away from the San Siro and outside the the city of Milan’s official boundaries.
Inter meanwhile are pushing for a new stadium in the town of Rozzano, just south of Milan, after having also sounded out the possibility of building on former industrial land in populous northern suburb Sesto San Giovanni.
On Tuesday Antonello said that Inter’s priority was to move to Rozzano while at the weekend Scaroni said he was sceptical of the possibility of carrying out the renovations works without having to move.
Both Milan clubs regularly attract crowds of over 70,000 and there is no stadium other than the San Siro in northern Italy with a similar capacity.
