Stadiums that take the spotlight.

A weather warning has been issued here in Catalunya about a wee bit o wind. Hurricane #bawbag has decided to take a holiday on the Costa Brava.

Here is another side dish of paella and Bovril for you to munch on. Hope you enjoy.

PLEASE SUPPORT THE MATCHDAY PROGRAMME




Football stadiums have been a fixture in our skylines for a good while now. Of course those outlines have changed over the years. In the mid 90s many a Scottish football fan jumped a wall to collect turf, turnstiles and toilet chains from grounds before the town saw the bulldozers come in and the cranes go up as terraces and sheds made way for seats and stairwells. In Kirkcaldy, Stark's Park’s outline hadn't changed much. Things were added and changed, like in the 50s when the the floodlights where placed onto the recently added “covering” that had been put in for fans, or new terraces and crush barriers put in, but the shed skyline has stayed the same.


In Barcelona, Camp Nou has been part of the Les Corts neighbourhood since it's construction began in 1954. The partially covered “bowl” holds over 90,000 fans, and when it is full on a Champion’s League night the atmosphere can be spine-chilling. However, on a very wet (little or no cover in most seats means it can be a very long 90 minutes), cold midweek game with only a few fans in, the feeling in the stadium is flat to say the least.

In April 2014 members of FC Barcelona were asked to take part in a referendum about the future plans of “Espai Barça”, a €600,000,000 project to change/upgrade nearly every part of the club. €420,000,000 would be set aside for changes to the stadium. Over 72% of the fans who turned out (less than 32%) voted yes to a complete remodeling of Camp Nou. This includes increasing capacity to 105,000 spectators and placing a  large roof over the terraces. The size of the ground at the moment is 40,000 m², but once the work has been completed, that figure will rise to projected 104,000 m². This is an ambitious project by anyone's standards with a lot of fans not sure if this is what they want for their club.

Change can go many ways. The success of Barcelona’s drastic seafront change is the envy of many an Olympic host city. However, find me football fan who hasn't complained that the change in the structure or even location has effected the atmosphere of games and for some changing the iconic imagery of a stadium can be a change too far.

Finding the balance between preserving the best and changing other parts is hard. But who wouldn't like to see the Olympics come to Fife! Burntisland (for example) isn't that different from Barcelona. Sea to the front; a hill to the back.  Imagine seeing Beach volleyball next to the Forth and the Marathon taking in the route of the famous Black Rock race- but only if you could make the pitch‘n’putt an Olympic sport and host it on the Links.