AC Milan have the chance to cap a momentous week on Sunday night as the Serie A giants face rivals Juventus after taking a huge step towards building a new stadium in place of the San Siro.
Top of the pile on goal difference, Milan are on a run of five straight wins in league and cup and showed enough in their thrilling win over champions Napoli last weekend to suggest they will be in the title discussion this season.
Milan are locked on 12 points with Napoli and Roma, who respectively face strugglers Genoa and Fiorentina, and one point ahead of fourth-placed Juve ahead of Sunday’s showdown.
Coach Massimiliano Allegri will make what he called an “emotional” return to Turin — where he won five Serie A titles — on a high from his team’s win over Napoli and with a full week’s rest, unlike his rivals who have all had European commitments over the last few days.
An opening-day defeat by Cremonese now looks like a freak result rather than a worrying start for Milan and with fewer matches to contend with over the course of the campaign, the seven-time European champions look a good bet for the title.
Further boosting Milan’s hopes of keeping hold of top spot this weekend are injuries to Juve’s Gleison Bremer and Khephren Thuram, two key players for the hosts injured during last weekend’s draw with Atalanta.
And if things look good on the pitch the club’s owners, American investment firm RedBird, were given a huge shot in the arm by the city of Milan finally approving the sale of the publicly-owned San Siro to Milan and their locals rivals Inter.
News of the decree came in the early hours of Tuesday morning after a drawn-out council meeting which lasted over 11 hours and featured anger from local politicians from across the political spectrum, about the sale of 28 hectares of prime public land and the demolition of possibly the world’s most recognisable stadium.
The clubs and Milan’s centre-left mayor Giuseppe Sala came very close to not getting their wish as the 24 votes in favour would not have been enough had a clutch of councillors from the right-wing Forza Italia party not refused to vote.
Paolo Scaroni, CEO of AC Milan said on Tuesday that he expects the new stadium to be ready for 2030, “well in time for 2032 which is a key date because the new stadium needs to be ready for the European Championship”.
Inter, who are three points behind the leading trio in sixth, host promoted Cremonese who return to the site of the historic victory in the first week of the campaign.
France midfielder Rabiot returns to where he and Allegri first met and struck up an almost father-son relationship, one which coaxed him back to Italy after a violent bust-up led to him being cast aside by Marseille.
Such is Allegri’s faith in Rabiot that he immediately got in touch once his brawl with Jonathan Rowe — now at Bologna — made his position at Marseille untenable.