A.C. Milan

Associazione Calcio Milan (Italian pronunciation: [assotʃatˈtsjoːne ˈkaltʃo ˈmiːlan]), commonly referred to as A.C. Milan or simply Milan, is a professional Italian football club based in Milan, Lombardy, that plays in Serie A. Milan was founded in 1899 by English lace-maker Herbert Kilpin and businessman Alfred Edwards among others. The club has spent its entire history, with the exception of the 1980–81 and 1982–83 seasons, in the top flight of Italian football, known as Serie A since 1929–30.

With 18 officially recognised UEFA and FIFA titles, they are the second most successful club in the world in terms of number of international titles, together with Boca Juniors and Real Madrid, and behind Al Ahly with twenty titles. Milan has won a joint record of three Intercontinental Cups and one of its successor, the FIFA Club World Cup. Milan have also won the European Cup/Champions League on seven occasions, second only to Real Madrid. They have also won the UEFA Super Cup a joint record five times and the Cup Winners' Cup twice. Milan has won every major competition in which it has competed, with the exception of the Europa League (in this competition they have lost two semi-finals in 1972 and in 2002). Domestically, with 18 league titles Milan is the joint-second most successful club in Serie A behind Juventus (31 titles), along with local rivals Inter. They have also won the Coppa Italia five times, as well as six Supercoppa Italiana triumphs.

San Siro

The Stadio Giuseppe Meazza, commonly known as San Siro, is a football stadium located in the San Siro district in Milan. It is the home of A.C. Milan and Inter Milan. It has an all-seater capacity of 80,018 making it one of the top ten largest stadia in Europe, and the largest stadium in Italy.

On 3 March 1980, the stadium was named in honour of Giuseppe Meazza, the two-time World Cup winner (1934, 1938) who played for Inter Milan and briefly for Milan in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s.

The San Siro is a UEFA category four stadium. It hosted six games at the 1990 FIFA World Cup and three UEFA Champions League finals in 1965, 1970 and 2001, and will host the 2016 UEFA Champions League Final.

The stadium is also used for concerts and other sporting events. Major acts such as The Rolling Stones, Bob Marley, U2, Robbie Williams, Muse, Tiziano Ferro, Jovanotti, Bob Dylan, David Bowie, Bruce Springsteen, One Direction, Madonna and Michael Jackson have performed here.

History

Construction of the stadium commenced in 1925 in the district of Milan named San Siro, with the new stadium originally named "Nuovo Stadio Calcistico San Siro" (San Siro New Football Stadium). The idea to build a stadium in the same district as the horse racing track belongs to the man who then was the president of AC Milan, Piero Pirelli. The architects designed a private stadium only for football, without the athletics tracks which characterized Italian stadiums built with public funds. The inauguration was on 19 September 1926, when 35,000 spectators saw Inter Milan defeat Milan 6–3. Originally, the ground was home and property of AC Milan. Finally, in 1947, Inter, who used to play in the classy Arena Civica downtown, became tenants and the two have shared the ground ever since.

Milan

Milan (English /mᵻˈlæn/ or US /məˈlɑːn/;Lombard, Milanese variant: Milan [miˈlã]),Italian: Milano [miˈlaːno]), the second-most populous city in Italy, is the capital of Lombardy. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area (the 5th-largest in the EU) comprises an estimated 5 million people (former Provinces of Milan and Monza-Brianza, with other Comuni included in the former Province of Varese). The enormous suburban sprawl that followed the post-war boom of the 1950s–1960s has resulted in a polycentric metropolitan area, known as Greater Milan, of 7 to 10 million people, stretching over the provinces of Milan, Bergamo, Como, Lecco, Lodi, Monza and Brianza, Pavia, Varese and Novara. The Milan metropolitan region is part of the so-called Blue Banana, the area of Europe with the highest population and industrial density. In terms of GDP, Milan has the third largest economy among EU cities (after London and Paris) and the largest among European non-capital cities.

One Direction

One Direction (commonly abbreviated as 1D) are an English-Irish pop boy band based in London, composed of Niall Horan, Liam Payne, Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson, and previously, Zayn Malik until his departure from the band on 25 March 2015. The group signed with Simon Cowell's record label Syco Records after forming and finishing third in the seventh series of the British televised singing competition The X Factor in 2010. Propelled to international success by social media, One Direction's four albums, Up All Night (2011), Take Me Home (2012), Midnight Memories (2013) and Four (2014) topped charts in most major markets, and generated hit singles including "What Makes You Beautiful", "Live While We're Young", and "Story of My Life". Their fifth studio album, Made in the A.M., was released in November 2015.

Their achievements include five Brit Awards, four MTV Video Music Awards, eleven MTV Europe Music Awards, seven American Music Awards (including Artist of the Year in 2014 and 2015), and nineteen Teen Choice Awards out of nineteen nominations, among many others. According to Nick Gatfield, the chairman and chief executive of Sony Music Entertainment UK, One Direction represented a $50 million business empire by June 2012. They were proclaimed 2012's "Top New Artist" by Billboard. According to the Sunday Times Rich List, by April 2013, they had an estimated personal combined wealth of £25 million ($41.2m) making them the second-wealthiest musicians in the UK under 30 years of age. In 2014, Forbes listed them the second-highest earning celebrities under 30, with the group earning an estimated $75 million from June 2013 to June 2014. In June 2015, Forbes listed their earnings at $130 million for the previous twelve months, and ranked them the fourth highest earning celebrities in the world.

Inter Milan

F.C. Internazionale Milano, commonly referred to as Internazionale (pronounced [internatt͡sjoˈnaːle]) or simply Inter, and colloquially known as Inter Milan outside of Italy, is a professional Italian football club based in Milan, Lombardy. The club have played continuously in the top tier of the Italian football league system since its debut in 1909.

Inter Milan have won 30 domestic trophies, including the league 18 times, the Coppa Italia seven times and the Supercoppa Italiana five times. From 2006 to 2010, the club won five successive league titles, equalling the all-time record. They have won the Champions League three times: two back-to-back in 1964 and 1965 and then another in 2010, the last completed an unprecedented (for an Italian team) seasonal treble with the Coppa Italia and the Scudetto. The club has also won three UEFA Cups, two Intercontinental Cups and one FIFA Club World Cup.

Inter's home games are played at San Siro, also known as the Stadio Giuseppe Meazza. The stadium, which is shared with rivals A.C. Milan, is the largest in Italian football, with a total capacity of 80,018. A.C. Milan are considered one of their biggest rivals, and matches between the two teams are known as Derby della Madonnina, one of the most followed derbies in football. As of 2010, Inter is the second-most supported team in Italy, and the sixth most-supported team in Europe. The club is one of the most valuable in Italian and world football. It was a founding member of the now-defunct G-14 group of Europe's leading football clubs.