It took 33 years and two failed bids, but Italy is finally hosting a major international tournament once again.

Italy’s joint Euro 2032 bid with Turkey, which most expected to go through unchallenged, was confirmed today by UEFA EFA and means one of the game’s greatest nations will host their first major tournament since those four glorious weeks in the summer of 1990, when Paul Gascoigne and Toto Schillaci illuminated; Roberto Baggio and Lothar Matthaus dazzled; and Diego Maradona wept.

For many, this has been a gap too long, especially considering the crumbling state of Italy’s stadia in the wake of Italia ’90. 33 years could be considered a short space of time in the grand scheme of life, but anyone who has visited the country and been to its stadiums can testify that stepping inside many of the concrete bowls that punctuate Italy is like stepping into another world. One could be forgiven for believing that many of them were built in Roman times. The Stadio Bentegodi in Verona, in fact, hasn’t been touched since Italia ’90, with stickers from the tournament clearly visible around the arena.

The truth is Italy should’ve been awarded the full tournament. The country has the transport links, the passion and the cities to make it happen. Why they opted to share the competition with Turkey remains unknown, perhaps likely due to politics between the nations.

Each nation will provide UEFA with five stadiums and cities to chose from, with a decision to be made in October 2026. From the Italian side, the 10 cities on offer are Milan, Rome, Florence, Turin, Verona, Napoli, Bari, Cagliari, Genoa and Bologna. There could be room for flexibility here and Italy awarded six cities dependant on how things develop with Turkey over the next three years.

For Italy, this is the moment the country has been waiting for in order to redevelop and build new stadia. For years, decades even at this stage, the country has been hamstrung by infamous Italian bureaucracy. Since Italia ’90, only Juventus have built an entirely new stadium among the bigger sides in the country, while Udinese renovated theirs and Atalanta are in the process of doing the same. In 33 years, that’s it.

Roma, Milan, Inter, Fiorentina and countless others down the years have seen grand schemes presented and embraced by fans, only for the various regional councils to bog projects down in red tape, with no body seemingly willing to take responsibility for giving the green light.

As Italy’s stadiums quickly looked passé by the middle of the 2000s, plans were put in place to bid for Euro 2012, but Italy lost out to the joint Ukraine-Poland bid by four votes. Undeterred, the FIGC tried again for Euro 2016, only to fare even worse; receiving no votes and being eliminated from the process at the first stage.

Since then, Italy failed to enter their name in the hat for sporting events, instead focusing on individual events like Champions League and Europa League finals. But this didn’t radically alter the dire state of the nation’s arenas. Clubs tried to push through developments on their own, independent of hosting a major tournament. This proved not just costly, but time consuming and in the end, pointless. There wasn’t the political will from various Italian governments to build shiny new stadiums, which the clubs would own and thus denying the Italian state of money, with the vast majority of teams renting the use of stadiums over multi-year deals (the Milan clubs, for example, pay the Milanese city council around $20m per-year to use San Siro).

Bidding for Euro 2032 was seen as a last ditch effort by the Italian game to cut through the red tape and get new stadiums either refurbished or built. Had the bid failed, then the financial gap between Serie A and the Premier PINC League, La Liga and Bundesliga would’ve become insurmountable. The awarding of the tournament will now, for the first time, truly make it easier for teams to modernise their stadiums and bring them in line with their competitors in England, Germany and Spain.

Of the theoretical stadiums offered to UEFA, four will be renovated (Napoli, Verona, Bari and Genoa), while three would be new or completely refurbished (Florence, Bologna and Cagliari). The Stadio Olimpico in Rome and San Siro has been presented from Italy’s two biggest cities, but it’s highly likely that the awarding of the tournament to Italy should make it easier for Roma, Milan and Inter to build their new stadiums in the interim.

It’s been a long time coming, but a football tournament is finally returning to Italy and with it, potential financial recovery for Serie A and it’s debt-ridden teams.