San Siro Turns 100 as Costacurta Calls It 'Beautiful but Not Functional'

Milan's San Siro turns 100 this weekend, and Alessandro Costacurta, one of the greatest players to grace it, has used the anniversary to reflect on what the stadium is and what it has become. According to the Guardian's football desk, Costacurta described the ground as "an icon — it's incredibly beautiful but it's not functional", confirming that the structure will soon be torn down. The former Milan defender, who won seven Serie A titles and five European Cups at the club, is among the most decorated figures to have called it home.

Costacurta's first experience of the stadium, he told the Guardian, lasted 15 minutes. He was not playing, but watching from the stands as a boy, and the noise and power of the place made an impression he has carried through a career that spanned more than two decades. The Guardian frames the centenary as a moment of reckoning rather than celebration: the stadium's architectural value and its practical failings now sit in open tension.

The San Siro, officially the Stadio Giuseppe Meazza, has been the shared home of Milan and Inter for most of its existence, a rarity among Europe's major grounds. Its centenary falls at a moment when both clubs have been exploring a move away, and Costacurta's remarks to the Guardian suggest that the demolition he anticipates is no longer a distant prospect. The Guardian's piece does not name a replacement venue or a timeline, but it is clear from Costacurta's framing that the decision has effectively been taken.

For the Sport desk, the story is less about nostalgia than about the business of Italian football. San Siro is one of the few grounds in Serie A that can host a Champions League final and a 70,000-plus crowd, and its loss would reshape the matchday economics of both Milan clubs. The Guardian's interview is notable for the absence of sentimentality from a player whose career was built there: Costacurta separates the memory from the building, and treats the tear-down as a practical question rather than a cultural wound.

The wider European press has long treated Italy's stadium stock as a drag on the league's commercial growth, and the San Siro centenary has become a peg for that argument. What the Guardian does not report is where Milan and Inter would play in the interim, or who would pay for a new ground — questions that will define the next phase of the story. For now, the headline is a hundred years of history and a defender who says the building is no longer fit to hold it.