Why San Siro is being demolished - and what happens next for AC Milan & Inter?

Carlo Garganese

• Updated: 30 Sep 2025 05:54 CDT
• 5 min read

Feature

Monday was a historic day in Italian football after the Milan City Council voted yes to a proposal that will see San Siro and its surrounding land sold to AC Milan and Inter Milan.

This decision means that Milan and Inter can now move forwards with plans to demolish most of the current Giuseppe Meazza Stadium at San Siro in order to build a new modern stadium.

The sale was approved by the Milan City council narrowly, with 24 votes in favour of a sale and 20 against it.

The cost of the sale is €197 million.

Last week, Milan and Inter hired architectural firms Foster + Partners and Manica to develop a new stadium with a capacity of 71,500, and redevelop the area with commercial and residential buildings.

The €1.2 billion project has been in the works in various forms for decades, with Milan and Inter desperately trying to build a new, privately-owned stadium on the current site.

However, numerous roadblocks - ranging from political and financial to bureaucratic and legal - have meant that until now the two Milan giants have been unable to proceed.

Like most stadiums in Italy, San Siro is owned by the local city council (of Milan) and not by the club(s) (Milan and Inter, in this case).

As a result the clubs are unable to benefit much financially and commercially from their stadiums in the same way that clubs in the Premier League and beyond are able to.

Modern stadiums in England like the Emirates and Tottenham Hotspur Stadium hold entertainment and other sporting events like music concerts and NFL matches which bring in huge amounts of money.

Serie A stadiums like San Siro are unable to do this for the benefit of the clubs as they do not own them.

As a result, the gap financially between Serie A and the Premier League - as well as Europe’s other biggest clubs like Real Madrid, Barcelona and Bayern Munich - has grown so big that Serie A teams like Inter and Milan have been left behind.

Expert view on San Siro demolition

Nima Tavallaey, owner and editor of SempreInter.com and co-host of The Italian Football Podcast, has explained why Inter and Milan are demolishing San Siro and building a new, modern arena.

“The reason Inter and Milan want a new stadium is because San Siro is way too old to be refurbished,” Tavallaey told FootballTransfers.

“The foundations of the stadium are almost 100 years old.

“So the clubs feel they can’t do anything with it, similar to the reasons why Wembley was torn down and built from scratch - it was very very old.

“You can’t refurbish stadiums that are essentially real estate for sports and entertainment when they are 100 years old.”

Tavallaey also explains what to expect next in the process, with the intention for the new stadium to be ready for 2031 in time for Euro 2032, which Italy are co-hosting with Turkey.

“What will happen now is within the next 40 days the sale has to be done,” Tavallaey explains.

“Then the planning begins. The design has been decided but as anyone who works in real estate knows, it is not set in stone.

“The idea is to begin development in 2027 and have it finished by 2031 for the Euros.

“The plan is to have the new stadium next to San Siro for one or two years, at which point the idea is to tear down the San Siro.

“For some reason the plan is to demolish the San Siro one or two years after the new stadium has been built and turn it into a residential area, to build houses, to have shops and restaurants and lots of green and parks.

“Gazzetta warned today, though, that this is only the initial phase. The sale.

“Once the sale is completed they can begin with the planning and how to build, and that is when all the legal challenges (from those opposed to the project) can begin.

“The opposition can delay, delay, delay and that is exactly what they will do so this is far from over and it will probably end in the courts.

“This is a step forward to finally building this new stadium but it is not the final step.

“The final step is when they actually start building.”

San Siro was initially inaugurated on 19 September 1926.

AC Milan have been tenants from 1926 to 1941 and 1945 to present, while Inter Milan have been joint-tenants since 1947.

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