Inter and AC Milan aim to have new stadium ready in 5 years, ahead of Euro 2032

By Canadian Press on November 7, 2025.

MILAN (AP) — The new San Siro stadium should be ready by 2030. Or at least that’s what the Milan clubs are hoping.

But Inter Milan president Giuseppe Marotta expressed concern on Friday that slow Italian bureaucracy could delay the project.

Inter and AC Milan completed their purchase of the 99-year-old stadium and surrounding area from the city on Wednesday — clearing the way for the Serie A clubs to tear it down and jointly build a new 71,500-seat arena.

The idea is to have the new stadium ready for when Italy co-hosts the 2032 European Championship with Turkey.

“It is clear that the objective is to be ready well before the start of Euro 2032 to ensure that this new stadium can be used during the European Championship,” Marotta told reporters outside the Football Business Forum in Milan on Friday.

“We hope that all this can happen because we are faced with a typically very slow Italian bureaucracy. I hope that it can be completed by 2030.”

‘The slowness of bureaucracy’

Marotta was one of the speakers at the forum, participating in the opening panel. And there he lambasted Italian bureaucracy at length.

“In the last 15 years, 50 stadiums have been built in Europe with an investment of around 20 billion, in that time only three stadiums have been modernized in Italy, so we are way behind,” he said.

“So we need to ask ourselves why. I don’t think that the main problem is the need to have more money, but instead the slowness of bureaucracy here.”

Both Milan clubs are owned by American firms — Milan by RedBird, Inter by Oaktree.

“Just think, two of the most important clubs in Italy are foreign-owned,” Marotta added. “That means that the Italian system isn’t capable of supporting elite sport.”

The clubs already announced agreements with architectural firms Foster + Partners and Manica to design the new stadium. The venue will be part of a project covering approximately 281,000 square meters (more than 3 million square feet).

New stadium should be open every day

The deal to purchase San Siro was valued at 197 million euros ($226 million) and Milan president Paolo Scaroni had said that the clubs would invest more than a billion euros in the construction of the new stadium.

It has been estimated that the clubs could each make as much as 180 million euros ($208 million) a year from the new arena, more than double their around 80 million euros ($93 million) each.

Increased revenue would come from attracting tourists on non-match days — to visit the museum or tour the stadium — as well as hosting concerts and other events and potentially selling the naming rights to the new arena.

“We want to build the best stadium in Europe because Milan is one of the capitals of football in Europe and needs and deserves to have a phenomenal infrastructure,” Scaroni said at Friday’s forum. “We want a structure which to the world will be open every day.

“If you go to San Siro now … there is nobody, you will be scared to walk around San Siro simply because this is a structure which is either too full when there is a match or too empty when there’s no match. We want a place where every day something happens. There are restaurants, hotels, commercial activity, all of that. This kind of thing will be built in Milan by 2030.”

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Daniella Matar, The Associated Press