Football in the North-East, the business of new stadiums

Football in the north-east takes a step backwards in terms of classification - Venezia has been relegated - but advances in planning. In Venice, the construction sites of the Bosco dello Sport (Sports Wood) are in full swing. The 315-million euro project envisages the construction of a new 18,500-seat stadium and a 10,000-seat sports arena in a 114-hectare area surrounded by greenery. It is the Municipality of Venice that has promoted the initiative - which was originally supposed to be covered by the Pnrr funds - thanks to the use of its own funds, a loan of approximately 40 million and the use of 95 million euro from the Fund for complementary investments in the works of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan.

Work on the stadium is scheduled to begin in the next few days, and its construction has been entrusted, on the basis of a tender, to the group led by Bordignon Costruzioni and comprising Fincantieri Infrastructures, Ranzato Impianti, Maffeis Engineering, Populous Limited, Seingim Global Service, Soil Engineering and Gae Engineering.

But if the public body is the promoter of the initiative, VFC Newco2022 - a trust that controls Venezia - has presented in these days a plan for the forty-year management of the stadium that foresees an economic commitment of 121 million for the stadium's improvement works, from the sky boxes for VIP guests to the internal restaurant, from the merchandising areas to the technological equipment for the radio and television coverage of the events. Work in the area north of Tessera, where construction work for the arena is already well advanced, will begin shortly and will be completed, according to the plan presented by the contractors, in mid-2027. Stadium and arena will be connected by a new access road, but above all they will be surrounded by greenery, with an ad hoc contract for the actual construction of the 'forest' that gives the project its name.

In Verona, on the other hand, the situation is stalemate: In March of this year, the city council's tender (led by former footballer Damiano Tommasi) for the new Bentegodi, conceived at the end of 2024 as a "new modern and multifunctional structure, going beyond the concept of a stadium dedicated exclusively to football to also allow for the holding of various events, both sporting and entertainment, with aggregation spaces within the structure for social-cultural and associative use, as well as a space used as a guesthouse/student quarters in particular for athletes", was deserted. Now the possibility of a proposal passes to the private sector, while the minimum main objective - with works already scheduled - is to be able to access as a structure the Italian candidature for the 2032 European Championships.

In Vicenza, meanwhile, the municipality has decided on extraordinary maintenance works for structural renovation, which will affect the Romeo Menti stadium: the goal is to make the section of the curve known as the 'Azzurra', the sector located between the grandstand and the south curve, closed since 2010 due to safety problems, accessible again, allowing the stadium's capacity to be increased by another 500 seats, thus responding to the many requests made over the years by the team's numerous fans.