The month of September will be crucial to understand what the future homes of AC Milan and Inter will be, with the idea of staying at San Siro not completely off the table yet.
As La Gazzetta dello Sport (seen below) report this morning, several updates are expected in the next few days from Milan regarding their plans to build a new state of the art stadium in San Donato, but while working on that front they are keeping their options open.
A meeting is scheduled for Friday at the Palazzo Marino between Mayor Beppe Sala, representatives of Milan and Inter, and the WeBuild team that has taken charge of drafting the San Siro renovation project.
During that meeting, the action plan, costs and also the sacrifices that the two clubs will have to make in the coming years if they want to renovate the nearly 100-year-old stadium and modernise it will be illustrated.
Much will depend on whether or not the long-term surface rights for the facility are granted, i.e. whether the clubs can buy the stadium and the land around it, which would allow the two teams to exploit further revenue opportunities.
Another issue is the cost of the works, which for the two teams is far higher than the estimates put forward by those who oversaw the project. For this reason, the meeting in two days will be crucial and the fate of the San Donato project will also depend on its outcome.
Speaking of which, Milan remain serious about San Donato. The club and Cardinale believe a lot in the stadium project and have already invested a lot of money in it. Over the summer, the cleaning and clearing of the San Francesco site was carried out and in the next two weeks this area will be fenced off and made safe.
The overall investment would be around €1.3bn to build a new home there and even from a bureaucratic point of view, things are proceeding quickly, as the newspaper underlines. In July, the committee for the Program Agreement met, which includes public bodies involved in the work.
In a few days, the first document of the Strategic Environmental Assessment will be made public. The objective with this committee at work is to reduce bureaucratic times and begin the work in 2026 in order to finish it within three years: the first match would be played in 2029.
La Gazzetta do mention though that Milan could still open their doors to a joint project with Inter, depending on how things proceed on the various fronts.