Introduction

It’s a very simple statement, but the great majority of soccer fans visit a stadium or a football ground to see, yes, a game of football. But not all. There are also a small, determined band of individuals who go because they want to visit and experience the stadium. They are groundhoppers. As any groundhopper will testify, there is so much more to visiting a new ground than simply watching a game between two teams you’ve never seen before.

In fact, sometimes the game itself can be the least interesting part of the trip. It’s the glue that holds together everything else around it; the journey to the match, going to a part of the world you’ve never been to before (and may never go again), learning about its history, sampling the local beers, sharing the pictures online, anxiously waiting for somebody to reply with ‘nice pictures :)’, and the post-match arguments about a dubious offside that won’t be replayed on television because the ground is in the middle of the countryside and has a capacity of around 400.

Take Abertillery Bluebirds’ home at Cwm Nant-Y-Groes for example. You wouldn’t travel hundreds of miles to watch a match in the Ardal League South East, but it serves as the reason to visit one of the most picturesque grounds in British football. Then there is the story behind that ground. The Bluebirds left in 2014 because the pitch would often become waterlogged, and moved to a 3G pitch at the local sports centre, only to make a glorious return six years later after a group of volunteers got together to sort out the pitch and its impaired drainage.

In this book we’ve done some worldwide groundhopping. Although there isn’t a set criteria for why one ground is featured over another, we wanted this to be a truly international selection that reflects football played at pretty much every level of the game from a World Cup Final to a regional tournament in Greenland. We also wanted to deliver a few surprises and for it to be a visual feast, including images of grounds that make you think what an amazing place to watch football, but also that it would be a fantastic place to visit. When you see the pictures of Gospin Dolac in Croatia you’ll know exactly what we mean.

One of two famous grounds at Eidi in the North Atlantic Faroe Islands.

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A lot further south, in the Aegean Sea, is the Greek island of Hydra. In a packed townscape, space has been found for a football pitch, just as the Faroe Islanders have transformed the flattest space they have – which emphasises the value of the game to the local community.

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The drone flyers’ favourite football ground, Henningsvær in the Lofoten Islands, is lined with racks for drying the village fishing fleet’s catch.

Unsplash/Matthew

The process of whittling down the grounds that are featured here, involved lengthy email exchanges, phone calls and negotiations with my editor, Frank Hopkinson, arguing about the merits of Guingamp’s Stade de Roudourou (not included) over SD Eibar’s Ipurua Futbol Zelaia (included). Should we feature the Emirates Stadium, De Kuip, the San Siro, Villa Park, St James’s Park, Elland Road, Stade de France, or, the Principality Stadium, which is a personal favourite? None of them made the cut after going to a VAR decision.

The floating pitch in Singapore was in danger of being demoted because even though it appears in every list of ‘bizarre football grounds’ it has hardly ever been used for football, but will be in future when the site is completely redeveloped. Other grounds like Cierny Balog were, to use football parlance, among the first names on the team sheet, but trying to piece together the story behind an amateur team and a ground in rural Slovakia, as well as why a steam train runs through it, was about as straightforward as it sounds. The question ‘why’ often arose.

Why is the Caribbean island of Montserrat’s ground called Blakes Estate Stadium? It transpires that Irish landowner John Blake made his money through sugar plantations on the island and owned 38 slaves. Perhaps the Montserrat FA and FIFA will want to have a look at that one. Or how on earth did anyone allow the Mmabatho Stadium to be built without anyone thinking, ‘but the stands are pointing in the wrong direction to the pitch?’ That said, if forced to choose the most remarkable ground based on the extraordinary story behind its construction, then Mmabatho, as you will discover, is a worthy contender.

One of the distinctive new venues for the 2022 Qatar World Cup, Stadium 974..

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Bate Borisov’s sinuous exterior is a wonder to behold, but it’s a bit of a trek for fans to get there.

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The football pitch at Taormina in Sicily is remarkable in that a cable car skims the pitch, but it didn’t make the book.

And while investigating what the hills were behind the Estadio Monumental ‘U’ in Lima, I stumbled across a story published in Peru’s oldest newspaper, El Comercio, that revealed it is the home of an ancient burial ground dating back to the Incas. That turned out to be one of the joys of writing this book; to discover so many fascinating histories and characters behind these temples of football. You will discover just how important major tournaments like the World Cup and European Championships have been in the development of major stadiums. Were it not for Cologne’s decision to pull out of being a host city for the 1974 World Cup, Borussia Dortmund’s Westfalenstadion wouldn’t have been built.

Similarly, the Stade de Roudourou in the small Breton town of Guingamp – which has the capacity to fit double the town’s population inside – didn’t make the cut.

The famous San Siro Stadium in Milan was not deemed to be worthy of preservation by Italy’s heritage authority and in December 2021 AC Milan and Internazionale, who share the stadium, picked a design by Populous to replace it.

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Delving into the biographies of these grounds also demonstrated that even though it is said that football and politics shouldn’t mix, the simple reality is they do. Some of these venues help to explain how nation states or regimes have used the game as a means for gaining populist support, while hundreds of grounds have been built by China around the world, including Rwanda’s Amahoro Stadium, as a means of gaining an economic and diplomatic foothold within many of the countries.

Being the son of an architect, I sometimes gravitated towards the designers and the concepts behind these grounds. I am also indebted to my father because he bought me The Football Grounds of England and Wales by Simon Inglis. It was the first book to really analyse how stadiums were made. In case you’re wondering what the difference is between a ground and a stadium then Inglis proposes that a stadium comes fully formed, like Wembley, Cape Town or SoFi in Los Angeles, whereas a ground can be anything from a pitch with a fence around it to Anfield, where the stands were built individually.

And much like his definition, what we think is a remarkable ground is subjective. One could argue that Anfield isn’t exceptional and so I must thank Dave Cottrell who so eloquently explains what makes Liverpool’s home special. Similarly, I owe a pint of locally brewed ale ‘Only With Love’ to Alex Leith for explaining how the Lewes Dripping Pan got its name, and to sites such as the excellent StadiumDB.com (Stadium Database), which provided a point of entry to discover more about far-flung venues such as Longgang in Shenzhen.

There are some obvious choices here, but not necessarily for the reasons one may think. There are better stadiums in terms of facilities than the Camp Nou, and its inclusion is largely by reputation. There are certainly more integrated stadiums than Fulham, which got its famous cottage thanks to architect Archibald Leitch omitting to include any changing rooms in the grandstand (for Ted Lasso fans Craven Cottage stands in for Goodison Park in the first series).

I hope there is something in this book for everyone, from the armchair fan to the diehard season ticket holder. If reading it turns you into a bit of a groundhopper, then I consider my work here done.

Al Janoub Stadium

Al Wakrah, Qatar

When the first blueprints for the Al Wakrah Stadium were revealed in 2013, the stadium’s award-winning architect Dame Zaha Hadid was compelled to address a debate about the shape of the stadium’s roof. The contours are inspired by the flowing shape of an Arabian ‘dhow’ boat, as it glides through the sea. From the inside the roof is meant to represent the boat’s hull turned upside down, providing shade and shelter.

Sadly, Dame Zaha never got to see her vision become a reality. She passed away suddenly in 2016 following a heart attack. The stadium was completed in 2019 and renamed from Al Wakrah to Al Janoub Stadium, meaning ‘the stadium of the south’.

To assist with grass growth, lighting rigs have been designed for the pitch.

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In many ways the flowing lines of the stadium resemble the ridges of a sand dune.

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A detailed view of the air-conditioning vents installed below the seats.

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Achieving closure; the dome roof can be fully enclosed to keep in the cold.

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It was among the first of the new Qatari stadiums to factor in the heat and somehow make the environment inside the ground manageable for both the players and spectators. It was said that a fully retractable roof coupled with an internal air-con system could bring down temperatures to around 22°C (72°F). This was some five years before everyone gave up on the pretence that you could host a summer football tournament in one of the world’s hottest countries.

The stadium’s capacity is set at 40,000 for the World Cup but 20,000 of those seats will be removed and donated to football associations and projects in developing countries around the world. This is part of Qatar’s broader objective in making 2022 the most sustainable World Cup.

Estadio Akron

Guadalajara, Mexico

When Jorge Vergara bought Club Deportivo Guadalajara in 2002, one of his first decisions was that the club should have its own stadium. For more than 40 years the team had shared Estadio Jalisco with several other clubs. Vergara was a charismatic and often erratic entrepreneur. During his 17-year reign as the club’s owner, Vergara got through 28 managers – an average of a new gaffer every nine months. A fiercely proud and nationalistic Mexican, he also decided that CD Guadalajara should be the only team in the Liga MX to have solely Mexican footballers in the squad. The ends justified the means. Within four years the club had gone from mid-table mediocrity to league champions in 2006.

Four years later, the Estadio Akron was complete. The club had employed a French team of Jean-Marie Massaud (designer) and Daniel Pouzet (architect) who wanted to create a stadium that would resemble a volcano after an eruption. The story behind it is that Guadalajara sits within the Pacific Ring of Fire, and Mexico is home to hundreds of volcanoes. The grassy berm that surrounds the base of the stadium denotes the slopes of a volcano, the white circular membrane represents the ash cloud, the red seats are lava… you get the idea. Those entrances you can see leading into the berm go through to a car park. Massaud and Pouzet didn’t want the area surrounding the stadium to be blighted by thousands of vehicles, so decided to put as many of them as they could underground.

The stadium opened on 30 July 2010, with a match between Guadalajara and Manchester United. It would be the last game that Mexico’s all-time leading goalscorer Javier ‘Chicarito’ Hernandez would play for ‘Chivas’ (Guadalajara’s nickname) before going on to become a cult figure at Old Trafford and Bayer Leverkusen. At first, the pitch was an artificial surface until Johan Cruyff was brought in as a director of football. Much to the delight of the fans, he insisted they play on grass. But in every other respect, Cruyff’s tenure was unremarkable, even down to the fact that he only had nine months in the job.

Vergara passed away in 2019, aged 64, following a heart attack. The stadium represents a significant part of his legacy. With Mexico due to host 10 games at the 2026 World Cup, Estadio Akron is widely expected to be one of three Mexican grounds chosen by FIFA to stage the event.

One of the curious things about Estadio Akron is that the lack of signage and detail on the structure make photos look like artist’s impressions.

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