The championship match between Milan and Como will be played in Perth, marking a historic first for Italian and European football. The situation came to an end when it seemed to be heading towards no…
Serie A makes history and becomes the first European championship with an official match moved abroad. The match between Milan and Como, evicted from San Siro due to the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics, will be played in Perth, Australia on 8 February 2026. When everything seemed compromised and the project was headed for failure, preceded by the stop to the similar initiative of the Spanish La Liga for Villarreal-Barcelona in Miami, here was the twist.
The announcement was made by the president of the Lega Serie A, Ezio Simonellifrom Saudi Arabia recounting the last hours: “The meeting with Infantino was very cordial. We had a series of doubts about the conditions required to play the match in Perth. Above all, we were forced to have foreign referees, while we have great trust in our match officials. We spoke with Collina who gave us ample guarantees on the quality of these referees. He has one or more top-level race directors in mind. We will accept this condition, then there are other things to put in place.”
In short, Milan’s pressing hit the mark. The Rossoneri club had immediately shown itself to be extremely sensitive to the idea of exporting the match to Australia where it has already carried out tour activities in recent years. The opportunity of the opening ceremony of the Games was too good not to be seized and the dossier had obtained the green light, albeit with many differences, from the Lega Serie A, the Football Federation and UEFA.
Everything had come to a standstill due to the conditions posed by the AFC, the Asian confederation: restrictions on the possibility of promoting the match as an official Serie A match and on the use of Asian referees. At first everything seemed destined to stop, then the acceleration that sets the organizational machine in motion. The trip to Australia will be worth around 12 million euros, part of which (3-4 million) will go towards organizational expenses. The rest will be divided between Milan and Como with a token also for the other top-flight clubs who have given their approval to the experiment.
