Naples, how many projects for the Euro capital of sport 2026

They planted a dream in the cement, so that it can sprout where the grass no longer grows: and there are 54 million (at least) euros and good reasons to believe that the future will grow there, behind a pick and roll. The city of the future is enclosed within a revolutionary idea, perhaps it is a streetball or maybe a fairy tale, and it will be so as not to miss anything, not even the roar of the Project, that they have called it "AreNapoli": and there will be no room for beasts and gladiators, nor for fights without quarter, because there where Naples is now a huge misunderstanding, the East zone, an immense fairy tale will be born that Gaetano Manfredi, the mayor who is also the mayor of mayors, imagines for young and old. "Because the city is very hungry for sports facilities and we are working to provide the first answers. The investors' project on AreNapoli has received our approval as a public interest. It will be a structure with a dual function, sports for Napoli Basket, and music to host events all year round. Arenapoli will be built over the course of two years at the Centro Direzionale, whose relaunch is a fundamental priority for us. This new Palazzetto will serve to give a new face to the entire area, demonstrating how sport is a great vehicle for the development of the territory".

In that lack now rooted in regret, in that metropolis left without Mario Argento, with a stadium that no one knows what it will be, the arena was forcefully wanted by Napoli Basket, to build a home, perhaps even a clear horizon: 12 thousand seats for sports, 15 thousand for concerts, an equipped urban park of 44,000 square meters, a commercial area, parking lots and a large pedestrian square on a surface that for 63 years will belong to the club - to RTI, which also includes Italstage Srl - and then will return to being a municipal property. However, in the meantime Franco Grassi, the president of Napoli basketball, is standing on the “lunetta”, looking up to desperately seek salvation in A1 and looking at the sky of this 2026 European Capital of Sport to be caressed with magic: "The project we presented for AreNapoli was the contribution we strongly wanted to offer to the city to finally be able to apply for major international sporting events and musical performances. It is an investment on our part to increasingly increase the offer from a territory that can become a fundamental point of reference for attractiveness and sense of hospitality. A project and a concrete contribution from those who love this territory, believe in it and invest in it daily and feel an active part of the change and ambition for growth". It is a strong choice, in an area - the Centro Direzionale - to be redeveloped, to give it back that tone only dreamed of in the 90s and then faded even in intentions: and Naples, the EuroCapital of sport of 2026, is now flattered by an attractive design, a sort of skyline that leads elsewhere, beyond time, almost as if the past had never existed, or perhaps yes, because inside there is the 2023 Italian Cup, won by beating Armani, and before that the "resurrection" in 2018, with the registration in A2 and the 2021 promotion to A1, thirteen years after the last experience among the big teams, and 14 years after the other Italian Cup, the one with Bucchi on the bench and Maione as president, witnesses of a beautiful epoque. About twenty years have flown by but tomorrow is still another day, to be lived in the AreNapoli.