A football stadium is a Stade used mainly for the Football, which includes/understands the playing field and the whole of the platforms and other installations bordering this one. It can be made up of a simple part of grass surrounded by barriers on which the spectators accoudent themselves, until constituting a monumental infrastructure.

Certain football stadiums can accommodate meetings of others Sport S, for example of the Rugby, even of the nonsporting spectacles, such as Concert S.

Concerning the lawful obligations of the football stadiums, to see article Law 1 of football: the playing field.

History

Put aside the Greeks and the Romans, few civilizations built enclosures of the gauge of the modern football stadiums. The British, who codified the play, had obviously the advantage of setting up the first enclosures dedicated to football, while being pressed sometimes on installations initially planned for the practice of the cricket… Great Britain well quickly covers stages and many clubs are fixed definitively in a place before the years 1890. Thus, a big number of English stages have more than one hundred years of age. Enlargings and restorations obviously made evolve/move the enclosure with the wire of the decades. The stages of Everton and Celtic, Goodison Park and Celtic Park, made a long time most modern figures of the stages of Great Britain. They were set up in 1892.

Contrary to a tough legend, the first English stages are seldom “with English”, like one says in France, i.e. of rectangular form while following the lines of the ground to nearest. Indeed, since the years 1880 and until the demolition of the enclosure of Wembley, the elliptic shape of the platforms was current. A plane track indeed often girdled the football field in order to allow the behavior of races of greyhounds or Speedway. Even notices in France where the stages are above all the cycle-racing tracks placing at the turfed disposal in their center vast wide, which the footballers and others rugbymen will colonize well quickly. Thus, the Stage of the Park of the Princes is inaugurated on July 17th, 1897 as a stage cycle-racing track and it is necessary to wait until 1900 to see the footballers evolving/moving in this girdled stage of an elliptic track cyclist. Even observation in Italy, where cycling takes its rise, as in France, before the appearance of football.

Most famous of the architects of stages of the pioneering days is the Scot Archibald Leitch. After the Second world war, development of the roof known as cantiliver , i.e. without post of support. Lighting was proscribed a long time after some attempts however paying in the years 1880. One will thus wait the years 1950-1960 to equip the stages of lighting systems increasingly more effective.

The real levelling of the football stadiums comfort safety is very recent. Until the middle of the years 1980, it was current to pile up until the smothering of the supporters upright in a platform. After the catastrophes of the end of the year 1980 (Bradford, Heysel and Hillsborough), undeniable progress was made in these fields causing, by-effect, a spectacular increase of the multitudes in the countries most touched by this wave of restoration of stages: Germany, England and France. Italy and Spain did not considered to be useful to launch out in expenditure of this type, and the averages of spectators stagnate or move back… Comfort and safety are today the two pillars of any modern stage.

Central element of the stage, the field of play also knows evolutions. Simple lovingly turfed ground maintained by a dedicated gardener or true gas works with system of integrated heating, the green rectangle can be high-tech today. The first systems adapted to the field of play were drainages returning the practice of the possible play, even by strong rain. The principle of the drainage being known for a long time, it is probable that it was used as of the first ages of the enclosures. The first systems of heating of the lawn limiting the effects of freezing are set up as of the years 1950.

One experienced in the years 1980 here or there the American astroturf, the synthetic shape of lawn, without much success. One directs oneself rather today towards a mixed lawn: natural and synthetic. Certain playing fields are entêtent not to take; let us quote here the case emblematic of Monaco which despite everything its efforts never managed to have a ground worthy of this name to Louis II.

List football stadiums by capacity

Stages in Europe

Stages in America

Stages in Africa

Stages in Asia

See too

Related articles

External bonds

  • World Stadiums

  • The Stadium Guides
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