Which is the best stadium in world football?
Thursday, 27 December 07, 07:52 PM · Comments(20)
Having visited the incredible Toyota Stadium during the recent FIFA Club World Cup, I began to consider some of the best stadiums I've ever seen games in.
I've been fortunate enough to watch football in many different stadiums. At the 2006 FIFA World Cup I attended games at the Fritz-Walter-Stadion in Kaiserslautern, the Allianz Arena in München and the Gottlieb-Daimler-Stadion in Stuttgart.
At the FIFA Club World Cup, we saw games at the National Stadium in Tokyo, the futuristic Toyota Stadium and of course Nissan Stadium in Yokohama. I've seen games in more ramshackle grounds too - my favourite being the Südstadion in Köln, where I once saw Fortuna Köln striker Seyedali Mousavi hit a passing train with a hopelessly inaccurate penalty against VfL Bochum.
These days I watch the majority of my football at Shimizu S-Pulse's atmospheric Nihondaira Stadium.
Set amongst the Nihondaira hills with a spectacular view of Mount Fuji and the port city of Shimizu below, it's hard to imagine a more picturesque venue for a football stadium.
The ground itself isn't too bad either, with four distinct stands rising up over the landscape. The so-called 'Back Stand' features a roof that stretches only three-quarters of the way across the stand. Like many I had been duped into believing it was so that the view of Mount Fuji was not obscured, but wikipedia's Shizuoka Sensei (whose photo I have lovingly republished here) assures us that the reason for the missing section is because there is not enough room behind the stand to lay the necessary foundations to support the roof!
Before moving to Shimizu, my venue of choice was the Sydney Football Stadium, home of A-League misfits Sydney FC.
The stadium would have to be the subject of one of the most ridiculous arguments I've ever stumbled across; that being whether Sydney FC should play out of a ground located in the city centre, or whether they should move to a stadium in the suburbs, closer to the geographical centre of Sydney - one of the world's most sprawling cities.
Personally I think it's ludicrous to suggest that Sydney FC should play anywhere but in the heart of the city itself, but when Sydney FC fans are not donning their town planning hats, they're often maligning the stadium's frustrating roof. Heralded as an architectural masterpiece, the roof over the Sydney Football Stadium is everything that modern architecture should never be - nice to look at and completely useless. The roof is supposed to represent a wave, or something, and meanders up and down over the stands in an eye-catching manner. Unfortunately it also covers about 10% of the stands below, allowing the majority of the crowd to leave A-League games wet, since a Sydney FC home fixture is synonymous with wet weather in the Harbour city.
Before the advent of the A-League, the ground I frequented most often was Borussia Dortmund's legendary Westfalenstadion.
There are hardly enough superlatives to describe what is rightly considered one of the world's truly great football grounds. Dortmund's Südtribüne (pictured) - where I used to stand in Block 12, is Europe's largest standing terrace, and is packed with more than 25,000 of Dortmund's most vocal supporters on Bundesliga matchdays. When I used to attend games in 2000, the capacity of the Westfalenstadion was 63,000. That was increased to 80,000 (or 65,000 as an all-seater) as Dortmund hosted a semi-final at the 2006 FIFA World Cup, and these days Borussia Dortmund enjoy the highest average attendance of any club in Europe.
The stadium was originally built as a 40,000 capacity venue for the 1974 FIFA World Cup. With the capacity having doubled since those days, some Dortmund fans now complain that the atmosphere at the ground has been diluted, with half the fans in attendance simply there to enjoy the spectacle of one Europe's biggest crowds. Still, it's hard to look passed the Westfalen as a venerable temple of football, and it's generally regarded as one of the most intimidating venue in the Bundesliga, at least when frustrated Dortmund fans aren't jeering their own team.
These days stadiums built in the 20th Century seem to have passed their use-by-date. They are increasingly being replaced by stock-standard stadia built on the outskirts of town, far from commercial and residential areas, and the potential for social interaction that these areas encompass. It seems the days of enjoying a pint or two in pubs that line the route to the ground are numbered.
The question of what makes a great stadium is also subjective. Some talk about capacity, others prefer location, while others still mention the atmosphere created inside the ground. For me a great stadium entails all of those things. But I'm interested to hear what you think. Which do you consider to be the best stadium in world football?
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No need for competition. Just answering your blog question. Anyway, yes the Dortmund fans do create more noise than Los Culés. The Boixos Nois (a radical supporters group in Barcelona) are banned
from the stadium due to Joan Laporta's reign as FCB president. He was actually brave enough to face the group head-on and he had them banned from the stadium. I do not like that group (in fact,
I've
had some bad encounters with them), but they were the group that always made the most noise. Chanting, singing, drumming, screaming... you name it. 70,000 Dortmund fans is complete sh*t
compared to
what 20,000 Boixos Nois are. Los Almogàvers now make all the noise in the stadium. That is where all the chanting is from. 20,000 Dortmund fans would drown out 10,000 Almogàvers, but
Almogàvers keep
the tempo up. I've never heard any fans sing as much as the Almogàvers, not even the English fans.
The Nihondaira Stadium sounds pretty impressive. Not been to enough grounds to make a judgement. What I do find is it's the basic things like having enough toilets or decent refreshments that I
remember most...usually in England it's pretty bad on that front.
Mike,
great blog as usual and cool question. My favourite ground in Japan has to be Kashima Stadium, a proper football ground, no running track, wonderful view and home to a great football moment
-
Robbie Keane's 92nd minute equaliser against Germany in 2002!
Mike,
great blog as usual and cool question. My favourite ground in Japan has to be Kashima Stadium, a proper football ground, no running track, wonderful view and home to a great football
moment
-
Robbie Keane's 92nd minute equaliser against Germany in 2002!
You couldn't be more correct about Kashima Stadium, Damian, it's an absolute belter of a ground! Hopefully Kashima's double triumph this year convinces a few more fans in Ibaraki to get out to games
because I think it's definitely one of the best football grounds in Japan.
20 Comments · Add yours
Europe's largest stadium, the Camp Nou, is the best stadium in world futbol. The atmosphere is always electric and everytime a gol is scored, the roar literally shakes the wohle city, never mind the
whole stadium. Everyone always plays down the idea of it being a 'good' stadium, but unless you actually experience it in person, your analysis of the stadium would be sh*t. The second best stadium
in futbol is the Maracana in Brasil. I've been to it and although FIFA won't allow 200,000 people like many decades ago, you can still hear the cheers of "Pele! Pele! Pele!". The 3rd best would be
Arsenal's old Highbury. I've been there, too, and the atmosphere was incredible. The Emirates stadium is nothing but serious crap, compared to Highbury. Down or up a gol, the Gunners fans (the REAL
ones, not those egocentric retarded ones) would always get behind the team and roar them on. There you go.
I would have thought that the Camp Nou was usually half empty though? Surely it's only close to its 98,000 capacity for games against Real Madrid and knock-out Champions League fixtures? There's no
roof over the majority of it either, so surely the sound that Barcelona fans do generate dissipates into the air? I bet the sound that Dortmund fans generate on a good day dwarfs the sound that Barca
fans create.