Sport in the city. Football games without frontiers. The case of the Cagliari stadium (Sardinia, Italy)

Sport in the City. Football Games without Frontiers. The Case of the Cagliari Stadium (Sardinia, Italy). Sport and stadiums have always been closely linked and related. Sport understood as authorizing, educating and controlling the population, both for good and for bad, has been used since ancient times as propaganda and as a currency of exchange, for truces of war and to amplify the differences between ethnic groups. While sport refers to recreational, educational and social aspects, stadiums, on the other hand, have the task of spectacularization. The present paper represents an effort by the authors to reflect on some of the changes intervened in stadiums. The idea is to understand if, and in which terms, something 'not new' is actually ongoing, learning lessons from the past, when sport facilities were tightly connected with urban dynamics, and stadiums - as major 'temples' of to-date sports, can play again this important role. Some considerations are provided in general terms and following the recent operation - on going - of refurbishment and reconstruction of the new Stadium of Cagliari.