We start in Italy this issue, with news of almost £2m-worth of safety improvements due this Summer to the San Siro Stadium in Milan, venue of the Champions League final this season. Resident clubs AC Milan and Inter are paying for the work, which will see new CCTV cameras covering the inside and outside of the towering 83,000-seat stadium, and enhanced protection for away fans and players. New seats will also be installed, which our correspondent Fabrizio Pugi has described as “Not easily flammable, and not useful for fly in the field!” However, it seems that Inter fans have decided to throw other objects during games; in the home game on May 6 against Atalanta, they hit the headlines by throwing a scooter from the middle tier to the one below. Luckily no-one was injured but we just want to know how they got it into the ground.............

Over in Sardinia, the President of Cagliari has offered to rebuild the Stadio Sant’Elia into a 25,000-seat venue modelled on the Stadio Luigi Ferraris in Genoa. However, the City Council is opposing the plan as the stadium would no longer be in public ownership, but President Cellino is threatening to move the Club outside the City boundaries.

In Turin, AC Torino’s plan to build a new stadium on the site of their old Filadelfia home seems to have hit the buffers at the planning stage. It now looks likely that Torino will join forces with Juventus to buy the Stadio Delle Alpi from the City authorities.

One local authority which is actively backing a new stadium is that of Bergamo, where plans have been passed to build a new 30,000 seat home for Atalanta at a cost of about £20m, with work due to start next year. Finally, Serie D club Paterno have christened their new stadium the ‘Stadio Falcone & Borsellino’, after two prominent judges who were murdered by the mafia.

The growing popularity of football in France has seen many clubs break gate records in recent years, and many non-World Cup venues are now being developed. Corsican side Bastia inaugurated new floodlights at the Stade Furiani in April and the long-overdue replacement of the West Stand should commence building this Summer. 2002 is the planned start date for a second tier to be added to the remaining three sides of the Stade Grimonprez-Jooris in Lille, taking capacity to 35,000.

Metz opened a two-tiered stand at the canal end of the Stade St Symphorien in March, with 7,000 seats taking the all-seated capacity to 26,700. In Reims, the Stade Auguste Delaune (pictured) has often been a disappointment for visitors expecting a grander stadium from such a famous old club. That’s all due to change from 2002, when work starts to build four new stands, one each season, to provide 22,000 seats by 2006. It’s possible that the design will be based on the innovative glass-roofed Stade de la Licorne in Amiens.

The venues for the 2006 World Cup Finals in Germany will not be put forward to FIFA until Spring 2002 at the earliest, giving potential bidding cities until the end of 2001 to get a bid in, but it seems that the row over the Olympiastadion in Munich will not be resolved and the Finals will bypass the city altogether. In the Second Division, Duisburg want to rebuild the Wedaustadion into a four-sided ground minus the running track, and Osnabruck will cover the remaining open side of their Piepenbrock-Stadion this Summer.

When the Nieuw Galgenwaard home of Dutch side FC Utrecht opened in 1982, it set a trend for stadium development that continues today, with four stands and the corner-space utilised for offices. Now the club will add a second tier to the stands and raise the roofline in order to take capacity from 13,800 to 24,150 by 2003. At the Mandemakers Stadion, home of RKC Waalwijk, a different approach is being taken, as the club is trying to raise funds to add seats into the corners and increase capacity by 1,200 to 8,000. Also in Holland, Heerenveen are planning a £6m investment in the Abe Lenstra Stadion that will see 3,100 seats added to the East Stand along with a host of other facilities in a project due to begin next season.

Our Belgian correspondent Peter Abbott has unearthed news of around 15 potential mergers, which would take the rest of the page to list. It is definitely the case that Belgium has too many clubs, but this is what makes it such fertile territory for stadium buffs. Fortunately, mergers rarely mean the loss of a stadium as the grounds stay under municipal control and other tenants are often found. The main item of stadium news concerns top flight club St Truiden, who may move away from their traditional home, known simply as “Staaien”. The club will struggle to create the 10,000 minimum capacity (including 8,000 seats) that will soon be implemented by the top division, so a new stadium is under consideration. We hope to have more information on these regulations, and those for other Euro-Leagues, in future issues.

Switzerland is enjoying a stadium building boom at the moment, and the totally redeveloped St Jakob Stadion in Basel duly opened in March with a home game against Lausanne. Seven other major stadium projects are either underway or at an advanced planning stage following the release of public funds to help rebuild Swiss grounds. Brand new stadiums for Geneva, Aarau and Zurich will be built, whilst the existing venues in Bern, St Gallen, Luzern and Lausanne are all likely to be substantially improved. The total cost of all these projects is estimated at 1.4bn Swiss Francs, although in the case of Basel, only 50m SFr out of a total budget of 224m SFr was spent on the football stadium, with the rest going on housing and retail developments.

Austria’s leading club Rapid Vienna has announced plans to build roofs over the open ends of their Gerhard Hanappi Stadion, though we don’t yet have a timescale for this.

UEFA’s stadium supremo Ernie Walker has expressed satisfaction with the progress made by Portugal towards the finals of Euro 2004. A surprise choice to host the event, Portugal offered to build five new grounds and make substantial improvements to five others, but a slow start caused concern in some quarters. The biggest problem was Benfica’s Estadio da Luz, which was always going to need large amounts of private investment. It has now been agreed to demolish the existing bowl – which was not in the best condition anyway – and build a new stadium from scratch to hold the Final. However, Benfica will need to ground-share with their bitter rivals Sporting Lisbon (pictured) during the construction period.