During a long interview granted to Radio TV Serie Athe president of Cagliari Tommaso Giulini he also spoke about the Sardinians’ new stadium:
“A very long road, because we inherited almost nothing: Sant’Elia was open to 5000 people, we quickly brought it back to 16000 and built a temporary stadium, the Unipol Domus, in four months, proving to be an example for Italian football : many Italian and foreign clubs came to visit us to understand how it could be done. The municipal administration of the time, led as today by the mayor Massimo Zedda, gave us a big hand, together with the then president of the Lega Serie B Andrea Abodi (now Minister of Sport, ed.). In the same practice we therefore started with the idea of a new and definitive stadium, in place of the Sant’Elia. The start-up registered a certain speed, and it was credible to think that within 5-6 years we would arrive at the inauguration of the new plant. Then with the regional council led by Christian Solinas we actually lost five years, Covid was also involved, and the project changed because – even more so during the pandemic – we decided to eliminate the shopping center while avoiding damaging the many traders in the Sant’Elia neighborhood and surrounding areas”.
The process?
“The public-private partnership requires a public contribution because it is a public work that remains public, with an initial concession of 50 years. The good news is that Mayor Zedda is back and that the Sardinia Region is led by a new governor, Alessandra Todde, who I hope will quickly take charge of the stadium practice with priority. It should be remembered that there are various models: the totally private stadium, owned by the club, which we rejected above all due to the enormous difficulties experienced by those who preceded me; the stadium is completely public, and I believe that in Italy it is really difficult to think that it can be achieved in a reasonable time, also mindful of my experience in the industrial sector. We started on the public-private path envisaged by the first law on stadiums at the suggestion of Abodi, hoping that the public tender will open in 2025: it is not certain that the partner club of Cagliari Calcio will win the tender, and in any case the 50 million contribution public (regional) will go to the company awarded the concession for the construction and management of the facility, which will have to return from an investment that would otherwise be lost and to which Cagliari Calcio will pay a substantial annual rent for the use of the stadium. We think that building a stadium costs no less than 150 million, recovering that sum is difficult, to put it mildly. The potential 10/15 million per year of additional income from match days is the only economic return that Cagliari Calcio would have, everything else, including the naming rights of the stadium, belongs to the project company that will build the stadium. The hope is to have a new stadium as soon as possible, with an identity, innovative and comfortable and which will emotionally push the team, and which will also allow us to invest more in building the staff.”