Juventus will inaugurate their own new €122 million stadium today with the hope that it will help them return to the top of the Italian football tree.
The Turin giants will become the first team in Italy to own their stadium following years renting first the Stadio delle Alpi and then the Stadio Olimpico, sharing both with cross-town rivals Torino.
But the new stadium, modelled on the likes of modern grounds such as the Allianz Arena in Munich or London’s Wembley, will help the team on the pitch according to Juve president Andrea Agnelli.
“The new stadium can give us 10 points a season,” he said.
His belief is that by owning their home stadium, Juve will be able to exploit the commercial aspects of such a move and hence earn more money and become more competitive in the transfer market.
And that is something Juve need following successive seventh-place finishes seeing them miss out on the Champions League two seasons in a row.
This summer they also missed out on a host of big signings, unable to offer the salaries or the challenges top players were looking for.
However, the 41,000-capacity venue does at least give them an advantage over their major rivals Milan and Inter who share the San Siro stadium owned by the city of Milan.
“Italy is an anomaly. In the big European leagues 25-27 per cent of revenue comes from the stadium, in Italy it’s just 13 per cent,” explained the club’s new commercial director Francesco Calvo.
Calvo expects Juve to increase their stadium receipts from €11 million last season to €32 million in this campaign, thanks to the new stadium.
For club captain Alessandro Del Piero, this will be his fourth home stadium as a Juve player.
“My fourth stadium in black-and-white (Juve’s colours), that’s my strangest record and certainly a tough one to beat,” he told the Gazzetta dello Sport.
“I hope it will absorb all the victorious energy of the Delle Alpi.
“This time we’re really at home and I hope that will create a feeling between us and the fans who could become our 12th man.”
The Juve fans finally enter the modern era with their own stadium, which will be first used tonight when Notts County are the visitors for the inauguration, having been the team who Juve’s black and white stripes were modelled on.
Then on Sunday Parma will be in town for the first Serie A match at the new stadium and, Juve are hoping, the beginning of a new and glorious era.
The inauguration of a new stadium has also spurred the local Juve supporters branch, led by president Michael Sciriha, to organise a series of activities to commemorate this occasion.
On Sunday, the club organised an open day amid renewed efforts by the committee to make their premises more supporter-friendly. A good number of Maltese bianconeri have travelled to Turin to attend the inauguration of the new stadium this evening.