Camp Nou Stadium

The Camp Nou ("new field", Catalan pronunciation: [kam ˈnɔw]), often erroneously called the Nou Camp (in both Spanish and English) is a football stadium in Barcelona, Spain. The stadium has been the home of FC Barcelona since its construction in 1957.

It is a UEFA 5-star rated stadium, and has hosted numerous international matches at senior level, and UEFA Champions League finals, the most recent being in 1999. It has a capacity of 98,772, making it the largest stadium in Europe, and the eleventh largest in the world. Its official name was Estadi del FC Barcelona (FC Barcelona Stadium) until 2000, when the club membership voted to change the official name to the popular nickname, Camp Nou.

Across Camp Nou is the Palau Blaugrana, the stadium for indoor sports and adjacent is the Ice Rink, the stadium for ice-based sports. Just behind the complex is the Mini Estadi, the stadium where the FC Barcelona Atlètic plays its games.

By the early 1950s, Barcelona had outgrown its old stadium, ^[3] Camp de Les Corts which had held 80,000 supporters. The Camp Nou, built between 1954 and 1957, was designed by architects Francesc Mitjans-Miró, Lorenzo García Barbon and Josep Soteras Mauri. FC Barcelona won their first game at Camp Nou in impressive fashion, a 4-2 victory against Legia Warsaw, with Eulogio Martínez scoring the first goal at the new stadium. Over 90,000 fans were present at this momentous occasion.

The stadium capacity has varied, opening at 106,146, but growing to 121,749 for the 1982 FIFA World Cup. With the outlawing of standing sections at the stadium in the late 1990s, its capacity settled to just below 116,000.

The facilities include a memorabilia shop, mini pitches for training matches, and a chapel for players. The stadium also houses the most visited museum in Catalonia, El Museu del Barça, which receives about 1,200,000 visits a year. The museum was inaugurated in 1984 under the presidency of Josep Lluís Nuñez. The museum shows 1,420 pieces of FC Barcelona's history, of which 420 are trophies. The inauguration ceremony of the 1982 World Cup was held on June 13. In front of a 100,000-strong crowd, Belgium beat Argentina 1-0.

Future

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the stadium, the club issued an international tender to re-model the stadium. The objective was to turn the stadium into an integrated and highly visible urban environment. The club seeks to increase the seating capacity by 13, 500 seats so that it will be bigger than the world's largest football stadium in Brazil. The plan must accommodate a minimum of 50% of seats to be under cover.

On September 18, 2007, British architect Norman Foster and his company were selected to "restructure" the Camp Nou. The plans include an extra 10,000 seats to be added and the estimated cost is €250 million.

Recent and historical significant matches

• 1964: Real Zaragoza 2 - Valencia 1 (final, Inter-Cities Fairs Cup)
• 1972: Rangers 3 - Dynamo Moscow 2 (final, European Cup Winners' Cup)
• 1982: Barcelona 2 - Standard Liege 1 (final, European Cup Winners' Cup)
• 1982: Belgium 1 - Argentina 0 (opening match, 1982 World Cup)
• 1989: Milan 4 - Steaua Bucureşti 0 (final, European Cup)
• 1992: Spain 3 - Poland 2 (final, 1992 Olympics)
• 1999: Manchester United 2 - Bayern Munich 1 (final, Champions League)