10 iconic football stadiums you need to visit (before the wrecking balldoes)
The new edifices might have shiny new seats, better sightlines, even beers filled from the bottom up… but just what's been lost in the modernisation process? It's the stories and rituals, that favourite seat and neighbour, the sense of history and hallowed turf, the feeling of being a fan and not a customer.
To quote Bruce Springsteen's defiant Wrecking Ball, a stadium demolition is where: 'all our little victories and glories have turned into parking lots'. And the Spurs fans didn't even get that cheese room… So, while many of us reminisce about the lost loves of Upton Park, White Hart Lane or even Wembley (conveniently forgetting the toilets and pillars), here are 10 other stadiums you need to savour before the demolition crew move in and it transforms into a shiny if soulless dome (or a shiny and soulless supermarket).
Exit the underground stadium at San Siro Stadio metro stop and your first glimpse of the 75,000-capacity arena will stop you in your tracks. It looks like it could have been created in another dimension.
You can hear the hum from a kilometre away, and that noise becomes near-deafening if you sit just above AC Milan's flare-waving ultras in the Curva Sud, as I was lucky to do during a thumping of Juventus in 2022. Yes, look a little closer and it's seen better days, but those towers, that roofing, the steep terraces and the views over Milan itself are incomparable.
And then there are the memories of Baresi, Maldini, Gullit, Van Basten, Shevchenko for AC; Bergomi, Matthäus, Zanetti, Ronaldo and Sneijder for Interwhen Serie A was at the pinnacle of football. And yet, San Siro looks set to be replaced in the early 2030s by a Sir Norman Foster and David Manica-designed arena, meaning time could be ticking to visit this true football cathedral.
It's been graced by peak Mendieta and Aimar, Ayala and Villa, with Valencia briefly breaking the Real/Barca duopoly in Spanish football during the early 2000s. Valencia have been planning to move from the (Viejo) Mestalla to Nou Mestalla since 2007, with the unbuilt shell of the new stadium acting as a concrete reminder of the club's turbulent fall from the pinnacle of Spanish football.
But now the Mestalla move is backonagain, with the club set to move in the 2027/28 season. Which means you have just months to experience the Mestalla's 50,000-capacity, 35-degree stands before Valencia do one to the €250-300m Nou Mestalla.
The local paella is pretty good, too. Whether it's the brutalist East Stand, the vertigo-inducing Leazes End or the sheer noise of the Gallowgate, this has long been one of Britain's (and Europe's) great football grounds for home and away fans alike.
But now the club are considering building a new stadium behind the existing ground at Leazes Park, meaning the hallowed turf where Keegan, Gazza, Waddle, Ginola and Shearer once shone so brightly could eventually be replaced. It's the ground of the Busby Babes and Charlton, Law and Best.