AS Roma have unveiled plans to build a 52,500-capacity stadium that would make them only the second Serie A club to play in their own arena.

Club chairman James Pallotta said on Wednesday he hoped the Stadio della Roma would be ready for the 2016/17 season, although it still depended on approval from local authorities.

Roma said the new stadium would be a central part of the strategy for the club's future and its "re-emergence as a force in international football".

The stadium would offer a variety of venues for music and entertainment, giving the club the chance to earn extra income.

Italian media said the stadium, to be built in the south-west of the city, would cost 300 million euros, but the AS Roma president said it could cost around 1 Billion euros...

The crowd would be only a few metres from the pitch, a stark contrast to the Stadio Olimpico which Roma currently share with neighbours Lazio, where a running track separates the fans from the field.

Stadium ownership is considered a key issue in Italian football as Serie A has slipped behind the English Premier League, Spain's La Liga and Germany's Bundesliga.

Juventus have won the Serie A twice in a row since they opened their own stadium in 2011 and are on course for a third successive title this season with Roma in second place.

But other Serie A clubs use municipal stadiums which are often in a decrepit condition.

They complain that this limits their possibilities for growth but that Byzantine planning restrictions and difficulties in obtaining financing prevent them from building their own stadiums.

Cagliari have been split between three stadiums in the last two seasons, one of them in Trieste on the Slovenian border and nearly 1,000 kilometres from their Sardinian base.

They are currently playing at the Sant'Elia stadium where ongoing renovation limits capacity to just under 5,000.

Roma, beaten European Cup finalists in 1984, have won Serie A three times, most recently in 2001, and the Coppa Italia on nine occasions.

Good news for Roma! More teams should do the same.

Looks nice.
A billion seems a bit much though.

Will lazio move too or not?

Thats cool for Roma but capacity looks very low than Stadio Olimpico .** **

I want to share this about our new stadium : VODAFONE ARENA

And this one is good too by our biggest rival, Bursaspor : Timsah (Crocodile) Arena

@Emre
lmao, the crocodile arena, that's what i call originality.

in general this is really great news, for the time these things are fixes we'll see Serie A rise again. lot of people just bash on the state of our league without knowing what's behind the current crisis. in 3 years things are going to change, mark my words.

also, the only thing i don't like about the new ASR and ACM stadiums is the capacity. i like the EPL philosophy better, less people but always full. for instance big teams should do like Juve, their stadium has 40k seats. i see no reason to go past this number. and for small clubs i'd see 25K seats max. new ACM stadium will have 60k, too much imo. it's also true that staduims are empty because of the ticket price, so logically that'd mean that once the stadium is owned entirely by a club, theoretically prices should drop and more people could afford tickets. this is the only reason which makes a 60k stadium have any sense, in Italy at least.