I have always been curious about the San Siro. How two of the biggest clubs in the world share the same stadium. How two of the legendary city rivalry play out on the same "home ground" comes derby day.
Both the blue-and-black side of I Nerazzurri, Inter Milan and the red-and-black side of i Rossoneri, AC Milan call the San Siro stadium their home.
The stadium is just a few bus stops down from the hotel. I decide to pay a visit before heading out to Munich that evening. Though the bus ride is a short trip to the stadium, it's quite a long walk to the station. There is a horse-racing track before the stadium.
Luckily there were a long wall of graffiti lining the way to the stadium. The artwork would bring a wry smile from anyone even remotely familiar with the game of soccer:
the bald referee,
the buck-tooth Brazilian,
and the cocaine-snotting Argentinian.
The stadium offer a paid visit to the ground and it's museum. It looks like a slow day but there was a respectable-sized group joining the stadium tour. One Asian guy in the tour was fully togged up in AC Milan home kit. From the way he speaks, he is either Singaporean or Malaysia. From his excitement, this was like a prilgrim of sort for him. The trophies on display must be like the holy grail for him.
The playing field does not look that impressive. If not for the history of the ground, it looks rather small. The stand has to go through many addition to cater to the number of spectators. In fact, to allow it to hold major international matches, the field needs to be upgraded to make it bigger. These I learnt from the tour guide, who was diplomatic enough to avoid getting into any discussion on which is the better team.
While both clubs share the same field, they have seperate dressing rooms under the stands. It is the dressing room that tells them apart. Inter has a simple minimalistic dressing room.
While AC, owned by the business mogul and disgraced ex-Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, has a posher dressing room.
Filippo Inzaghi sits on this particular leather "car seat" before retiring from AC after the 2012 season.
The asian fan given the key and the honor of opening the doors to the AC Milan dressing room.
Japanese international Nagatomo's jersey was on display in the museum, but Japanese playing for the Italian clubs is still a novelty of sort. That explain the typo on his name: Yuto Nagamoto?
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