A new step toward San Siro’s end as AC Milan and Inter unveil Generali Stadium plans

MILAN (AP) — More than a century after it was inaugurated, Milan’s iconic San Siro marked another step to the end Thursday.

And the beginning of Generali Stadium.

At one of Milan’s famous sites, Castello Sforzesco, the future of another historic monument was revealed as AC Milan and Inter Milan unveiled plans for their proposed new stadium, which would see the demolition of the Stadio Giuseppe Meazza — commonly referred to as San Siro.

And the two soccer clubs — which have long shared a ground — have already sold the naming rights, with the new arena to be called Generali Stadium from day one. Generali is Italy’s largest insurance company.

Shortly before the briefing began, a group of Inter fans walked into the courtyard of the castle and unfurled a banner with the words “you will never extinguish the lights at San Siro” as they chanted “hands off San Siro.”

Here’s some more things to know about Milan’s new stadium:

The clubs had already announced agreements last year with architectural firms Foster + Partners and Manica to design a new stadium.

Foster + Partners and Manica’s projects include Wembley Stadium in London, Chase Center in San Francisco, and Lusail Stadium in Qatar.

Norman Foster and David Manica presented the plans at Thursday’s briefing.

“It is always a challenge to design a building that replaces a beloved project,” Manica said. “And the way I’m thinking about this project and the spirit that we began with from the beginning was: same soul, different building.

“The most important thing that we realized when we designed this project is that the San Siro is a feeling, more than a building, it’s a feeling. And everything that we needed to do here was to drive that feeling and carry it into the building.”

At the heart of the design is a striking oval form, with the frame of the stadium made out of 80 huge diamond shapes and a sweeping double-curved roof.

The diamond shapes offer glimpses into the stadium from the outside and sweeping views across the city from within.

The points of the diamonds are the tallest — 60 meters — at each of the ends behind the goals, known as “the curva” in Italian, where the hard-core fans normally sit.

“How do you take the legend of San Siro and how do you build on that? Perhaps the essence are the fans at the two extreme ends behind the goal, ‘the curve’,” Foster said.

“And in the new stadium, look at the shape of it, it’s low in the body and it rises up at either end, and that’s the response to the fans.”

The stadium will be raised on a podium, with space underneath for parking, a museum and club stores.

The venue will be part of a project covering approximately 281,000 square meters (more than 3 million square feet).

The 360-degree stadium bowl will have 71,500 seats across two tiers — in comparison to the three ‘rings’ of San Siro.

Those seats are so close to the field that “it’ll actually feel as though you’re sitting on the grass,” according to Manica, and rise up in steep walls — with seating inclinations of up to 37 degrees to amplify both atmosphere and visual impact.

“The soul of this project is really the two curvas,” Manica said. “We considered them and thought of them as two walls of people. They’re pulled out and over the goals as much as possible. The first row of the curvas is actually closer than the existing building.

“So that intensity of the atmosphere will be enhanced. And it really comes down to noise. Noise is one of the primary things that we need to hold and maintain in the project.”

The new stadium’s acoustic design has been engineered to capture and intensify crowd energy, not only to minimize noise disturbance outside the arena, but also to create what the clubs hope will be one of the best atmospheres in world soccer.

The exterior will also be customized through colored LED lighting and the ability to project images on the facade.

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

Construction is expected to begin in 2028 and the first match targeted for the 2031-32 season, although Inter president Giuseppe Marotta expressed concern last year that slow Italian bureaucracy could delay the project.

The clubs will continue to play at San Siro while the new stadium is built on an adjacent parking lot. The iconic San Siro will then be mostly torn down.

It’s not the first time the Milan clubs have unveiled plans for a new stadium.

Two sets of plans were presented in 2019, with “The Cathedral” project by Populous chosen over Manica-Cmr Sportium’s “The Rings of Milano” design two years later.

The new stadium was expected to be ready by 2024 or 2025 but public debate and bureaucratic delays forced the Milan clubs to explore other options, before pivoting back toward a shared-stadium model on the San Siro grounds.

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

It has been estimated the clubs could each make as much as 180 million euros ($208 million) a year from the new arena. For now, they make around 80 million euros ($93 million).

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 the sale of the naming rights to Generali.

See AP’s full soccer coverage here