San Siro per Sempre

Words + Photography by Luke Alland, using Leica's Q2 Reporter.

The San Siro is one of those grounds that has been ever-present in the lives of every football fan since it was completed in 1926. However, its current—and arguably more iconic—form featuring the four pillars in each corner with the unmistakable red roof was completed just before the 1990 World Cup, hosted in Italy. The stadium is part of footballing folklore, both in real life and the virtual one (ask Pro Evo and FIFA fans about the latter). For AC and Internazionale, it has been home for over seventy-five years and has hosted World Cup semi-finals, European Finals and Champions League games that live long in the memory. I had the opportunity to visit the stadium over a weekend in Milan, and can safely say I've ticked something off my bucket list. It's criminal that they are going to knock it down, and as much as I don't want to be #AgainstModernFootball, there are some things even the most accommodating of football fans wouldn't ever want to part with.

It's a relatively easy ground to get to, although not an easy ground to actually get in to. Earlier in the day I bought my ticket online for €10, having to ask someone at the hotel for their Italian phone number for the SMS code to come through in the process. It's not a massive game by any stretch—Inter vs Verona—and yet the game pulls a 70,000-strong crowd. Stupidly, however, I had left the hotel earlier in the day without my ID, meaning I was in quite a rush to get back there to pick it up. Reason being, I was informed by locals that there was absolutely no chance of me getting in without it. Staying near the central station, it took about 40-minutes to get to the San Siro via two Metro lines, but compared to Wembley and other major stadia, it is quite a doddle.

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Read the full article in Issue #1 of The Accessible Magazine, available to order here.