From Milan to Rome, because Italy can’t build stadiums
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The Minister of Sport, Andrea Abodi, is right to underline how “on the subject of stadiums in the last 30 years we have managed to do little, too little, unbearably”. And to write on Twitter that the candidacy for the 2032 European football championship is “very useful, but it cannot be indispensable”.
An economic decline
The problem is that this is true in a normal country, which has the development of the sports industry and its assets at heart. But unfortunately Italy is not from this point of view a “normal country”. Therefore, without a major event and collective responsibility, it is impossible to carry out strategic public and/or private “works”. In truth, even in these situations, as demonstrated by the recent difficulties associated with the 2026 Winter Olympic Games, the bureaucratic hurdles and indecisions of central and local bodies get in the way of normal planning and construction of sports and non-sports infrastructures. The occasion of a European football championship seems indispensable for this. On the other hand, the unexpected defeat in the candidacy for the 2012 European Championships, when the competition was assigned to Poland and Ukraine in the photo finish, was undoubtedly one of the reasons for the economic decline of Italian football.
In these twenty years, the new stadiums built in the peninsula can be counted on the fingers of one hand. The Kafkaesque events of James Pallotta’s Roma stadium in Tor di Valle and the project for the new San Siro by Inter and Milan are emblematic: years and years of renderings and debates, without any public decision-maker having bothered to say a clear yes or no to the intervention. An endless melina in which the dreams of clubs and the prospects for urban regeneration of large metropolitan areas are drowned. Elsewhere (Florence) we have reached the paradox of seeing private investments blocked and of seeing public resources from the Pnrr channeled for the restructuring of an obsolete plant. At the point in the last few hours the European Union has also suspended the disbursement of these funds (as well as those connected to the Bosco dello Sport in Venice, within which the new Reyer building owned by the mayor of the lagoon city should have been built Louis Brugnaro). The Minister of EU Affairs Raffaele Fitto clarified that in agreement with the mayors and with the ministries of the Interior and of the Economy “he will prepare clarification answers” to the EU on the projects under examination “hoping that a solution will be found”.
From Europe to Russia
What has happened in the meantime around the world in terms of investments in stadiums? Between 2010 and 2020, 153 new plants were erected in the Old Continent for a cost of 20 billion. The construction of these works was encouraged in some countries by the organization of major events such as the World Cup and European Championships: 16 new stadiums were completed in Russia, 23 in Poland, 4 in Ukraine and 10 in France. In Germany, 11 new stadiums, despite the effort already made for the 2006 world cup. meanwhile it has modernized 28 arenas. That Turkey against which Italy will have to compete for the assignment of the 2032 European championship.
Even during the pandemic, although it slowed down, the construction of new structures continued. On 1 September 2020, Brentford Community Stadium was the first new stadium to be opened in Europe after the health emergency. This was not an isolated case, as another 17 new plants were opened between 2020 and 2021. In the coming years, the “fever” will not subside. Indeed, more than 100 sports building initiatives are being carried out or planned in Europe. In the Premier League, La Liga and Ligue 1, various teams are pursuing investments of over 3 billion euros.
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