- Nine full-sized pitches will fit inside Great Strahov Stadium
I’m not sure why, but this was one of my favorite challenges to construct- I hope that everyone had a good time trying to find the answers. As usual, only Andrew B. submitted his answers in full and on time…though I suspect that two or three more submissions will arrive after the deadline. I’m starting to think that this feature (and maybe ATD as a whole!) attracts a disproportionate number of procrastinators! Well, no matter, we’re all about fun here at ATD, late submissions are better than none at all. Join me on the other side for the answers…
1. What club, playing in its country’s sixth division has a home stadium that is larger than that of six clubs in that country’s top league?
Verbandsliga Niederrhein side KFC Uerdingen 05 plays in Grotenburg Stadion (capacity 34,500) which is larger than that of 1. Bundesliga clubs 1. FSV Mainz 05, Bayer 04 Leverkusen, F.C. St. Pauli, S.C. Freiburg, TSG 1899 Hoffenheim, and VfL Wolfsburg.
2. This country’s largest stadium can hold more than 60% of the country’s entire population?
Ligue 1 side A.S. Monaco’s Stade Louis II’s has a capacity is 18,500. The entire population of the Principality of Monaco is just under 31,000. To give you some perspective, if there was a stadium that held the same proportion of the U.S. population it would have to have a capacity of just over 186m people!
3. Based on “official capacity,” what club team’s stadium has the largest capacity?
Salt Lake Stadium, capacity 120,000, is the home of the I-League club Kingfisher East Bengal FC. Most matches are played with the stadium’s capacity limited to 24,000 in the way that many MLS clubs using American football stadiums sell only a portion of their stadium’s actual capacities.
4. What is the largest stadium in Europe that can boast an average attendance of over 99% for its club’s matches?
Despite ranking fifth in size for club football stadiums (and 1oth for all football stadiums in Europe) nobody packs them in like the Red Devils of Manchester United. Old Trafford- capacity 75,957- averages a crowd of 75,304.
5. What three English stadiums- still in use- suffered bomb damage during the Blitz?
Everton’s Goodison Park, Manchester’s Old Trafford, and Notts County’s Meadow Lane all suffered some degree of damage during the German bombardment of England during World War II. Further research also finds that Villa Park and Highbury were also damaged.
6. Name two soccer-specific sites in the United States that pre-date the NASL and are still in use.
The key here was “soccer specific” because there are many old stadiums where soccer is/has been played, but that were not built for that purpose. My research says there are only two answers to this question: Metropolitan Oval (Queens, NY- 1925) and Lusitano Stadium (Ludlow, MA- 1918). Lusitano Stadium is the home of the PDL Western Mass Pioneers and one of my regular haunts during the summer months.
7. What do Oriole Park at Camden Yards, Gillette Stadium, Reebok Stadium and Emirates Stadium all have in common?
All were designed by the the architectural firm Populous (formerly HOK Sport).
8. In the era before crowd safety became a football matches the stadium with the greatest capacity in the world was neither Brazil’s Estádio Maracanã nor Mexico’s Estadio Azteca- what was it?
Velký strahovský stadion (Great Strahov stadium), which has room for 220,000 spectators, was once the home of Sparta Prague as well as other athletic events and political gatherings. It is still in use today as a concert venue and as Sparta Prague’s training complex.
9. What stadium, opened in 1807(!!), still occasionally holds football matches?
Milan’s Arena Civica (aka, Gianni Brera Arena) has held just about every imaginable event in the last two centuries- Wild West shows, naval battles, rugby matches, concerts- including football matches. Just to give you an idea of how old this place is, Napoleon ruled northern Italy when ground was broken for this arena.
10. What World Cup stadium was destroyed during World War II?
Stadio Giorgio Ascarelli (Stadio Partenopeo) in Naples, hosted matches in the 1934 World Cup including the tournament’s third place match in which Germany defeated Austria by a margin of 3-2…foreshadowing anyone? The stadium was later destroyed by Allied bombers.
That’s it, I hope you enjoyed this week’s challenge as much as I did. I’ll be back tomorrow with a new one.
hey now – I sent in my 60% correct submission the same day! And I still contend Old Trafford was pretty much destroyed at one point and did become a WC stadium later, and that (loosely) RFK and Buck Shaw are soccer specific…now :p
…and that Bayern has sold out the Allianz since it’s opening (double :p)
Fine, but its capacity is smaller than Old Trafford’s, so it doesn’t address my question.
Even if I grant you that Old Trafford was 100% destroyed during the war, it was not a “World Cup” stadium WHEN (and that’s the key word!) it was destroyed, it became one LATER!
You realize there is no prize for these challenges, right?
Once Avoiding the Drop gets bought out by ESPN, I propose that there be prizes for Challenges. Let’s start with kit giveaways.
Am I eligible?
I gotta say this was harder than most previous quizzes. And I lost the other guy in my dept. who returned to school at semester, so I have a lot less downtime to use my Google Fu.
Got 2 wrong, forgot to send it in.
Procrastination? From your readership? I’ll look into that accusation later.
As usual, only Andrew B. submitted his answers in full and on time…
That seems a bit harsh. Non-pseudonym-using Andrew submits his answers more often than I do. Hopefully that will change once I get back into the swing of Thursday Challenge, but he’s the one who deserves kudos.