Nick is a soccer and motor 
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and appreciater of all things 
Japanese, trapped inside a 
mundane office job and looking 
for a way out.

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Whilst watching the first leg of the UEFA Cup Semi-Final between Osasuna and Sevilla, I couldn’t help but be impressed by the atmosphere created within the small Estadio Reyno de Navarra stadium. Just under twenty thousand fans were packed into the venue, creating a hostile atmosphere which largely contributed to the home team’s one-nil success. In the midst of many recent moves to new stadiums by eminent English clubs, I couldn’t help but wonder if the same atmosphere is being lost within the English game.

The spate of new stadiums is mainly due to the anticipated financial advantage of having a larger and more easily maintained stadium, allowing the club in question to compete on a more level playing field with their competitors. The best example of this is Arsenal, who this season have moved from ‘Highbury’, their home for over ninety years to ‘The Emirates’, a new 60,000 capacity stadium. The addition of over 20,000 extra fans every week obviously leads to a great increase in revenue and it seems will allow them to have their most active transfer window for a few years at the end of the current season.

Whilst Arsenal’s move has made great financial sense, it could be argued that it has had an adverse affect on their performance on the field. Although they have performed slightly better than last season in the English Premiership, their performances in the European Champions League seem to have suffered from their move. Last season they made their way to the final of the competition, largely based on their ability to overrun their opponents at the small, cramped Highbury Stadium. This season they struggled, having been knocked out of the competition after a tepid one-all draw at home against PSV Eindhoven at the last sixteen stage. Although I have no doubt that the extra revenue will allow Arsenal to improve their team significantly in the future, the loss of the unique Highbury atmosphere may be harder to replace than they think.

The advantage that creating an uncomfortable atmosphere for your opponents can give is probably best seen by Portsmouth. Their 20,000 capacity Fratton Park stadium is an imposing place for opposition teams due to the close proximity of the fans to the pitch and the noise they can generate. Their home record since their return to the Premiership in 2003 speaks for itself and in this season alone they have defeated top sides such as Manchester United and Liverpool at Fratton Park. It would be easy to argue that without such an awkward stadium, Portsmouth would struggle to get the same sort of results as they currently do at home, but it seems even they aren’t immune to the current new stadium craze: a new 36,000 capacity stadium is currently under planning permission, scheduled to be built by 2011.

Many fans see a stadium move as ripping the heart of the club away, especially as many new stadium builds are on the outskirts of the towns and cities in which the clubs are based, thanks to cheaper, more readily available land. Unlike in America where the idea of franchises moving from city to city or even between states is an accepted part of the business, English football clubs very much take their identity from where they are based and thus, even moving the stadium a few miles from the center of a town or city can cause great displeasure amongst fans. For instance, the two big Merseyside clubs Liverpool and Everton are both in the process of trying to build new stadiums away from the city centre, which has caused great discontent amongst many of their fans, afraid that without their iconic Anfield and Goodison Park stadiums respectively, the clubs will lose much of their identity.

The main issue that needs to be avoided is ending up with a large number of big stadiums where the fans are detached from the action due to the distance between them and the pitch. This issue has plagued Italian football in recent years, with many clubs still playing in the large stadiums built for the World Cup held in Italy in 1990, despite now playing in the second tier of Italian football or not being the force that they once were. They are therefore seeing 50,000 capacity stadiums only half full most weeks, which just creates a bad image for the popularity of the game. Clubs such as Manchester City and Leicester have similar problems filling their new stadiums in England and this is definitely an issue that needs to be looked at during the current upturn in new stadium builds.

Whilst I do agree that some teams have a need for new stadium, such as a lack of expansion possibility on their current site or simply an old stadium falling into disrepair, I am slightly concerned at just how many new stadiums are currently being built. It seems some teams are building new stadiums in the hope they can attract increased capacities in order to fill them, without the figures to back up such an assumption. Stadiums built with average capacities in mind, which allow the fans to get close enough to the pitch to create a great atmosphere, should be the way forward and I just hope that sensible planning takes over from what currently seems like a bandwagon everyone wants to jump onto. If Spanish clubs can still function in their smaller stadiums I see no reason why sensibly run English clubs shouldn’t be able to do the same.