West Ham’s switch to the London Stadium is featured in the Guardian highlighting unsuccessful football stadium moves.
The article by Niall McVeigh also discusses the Stadium of Light (Sunderland) in 1997, Pride Park (Derby County) in 1997, Kassam Stadium (Oxford United) in 2001, Reynolds Arena (Darlington) in 2003, Ricoh Arena (Coventry City) in 2005, Emirates Stadium (Arsenal) in 2006, Cardiff City Stadium in 2009.
On the London Stadium, the Guardian wrote:
“In February 2011, the Olympic Park Legacy Company made a decision with seismic ramifications. Eighteen months before the 2012 Games began, it was decided that West Ham, rather than Tottenham, would benefit from an Olympic Stadium tenancy, secured in a cut-price deal. Almost a decade on, it is clear who really won that day.
West Ham’s struggles at the rebranded London Stadium have raised the bar for difficult relocations. The club’s decision to work around the running track, rather than rebuild the stadium as Spurs had planned, has not paid off. Sight lines still focus on the track, or at least the giant claret carpet that covers it up, with managers traipsing several yards across it from dugout to touchline.
Sections of retractable seating, connected to the main stands by awkward gangways, do nothing to help an atmosphere that switches between forlorn and febrile. The stadium has seen fighting between rival fans and protest pitch invasions, enabled by inadequate matchday security. The idea of relegation and playing Championship football in this vast white elephant is unthinkable.
The stadium saw so many joyful moments in 2012 and has gone on to host elite athletics, both rugby codes and Major League Baseball. There has been precious little for West Ham fans to cheer, however – leaving their beloved Upton Park behind has been a painful experience.”
ClaretandHugh says: We get it. This has been highlighted so many times and we aren’t expecting it to go away any time soon. What of course exacerbated the feelings of those who are opposed totally to the stadium is that it could hardly have been a more different type of place to Upton Park. Chalk and cheese don’t come close. The family feel has gone and obviously we hang on to our memories with a vengeance. As Mooro once remarked when asked if he wanted a statue of himself built: “No thanks – I don’t want to be remembered in bronze. The best camera is in the head – that’s where the best memories and best pictures are stored.” Nailed it and it’s the same with stadiums. Some of us will never get used it – only the passage of time and a new generation will sort that out.
Everyone loved the Boleyn especially the 30k season ticket holders. However, tens of thousands of fans never got tickets. Now an extra 25k fans are season ticket holders, the stadium is evolving and players seem to see it as a good stadium.
The only way this ever changes is if new owners can do a deal to buy it cut price and re develope.
Current owner’s couldn’t care less, they just play lip service.
It’s a shame for the new generation, it’s like when I used to go to Stamford bridge in the old days and thought how can you watch football from this far away each week.
Such a shame they lied.
The stadium has great sight lines. When the fans sing, the place shakes.
It will never have the character of Boleyn but will develop one of its own.
On of the first matches I watched in person at the London Stadium was against Chelsea. Had the misfortune of being near the away fans. “You sold your soul for this s…hole” they chant. Until we score and the Stadium erupts. Once the singing subsides, the local Hammer fans politely suggest the away fans change allegiance.
Great win, great day, great experience.
Talk about flogging a dead horse. I miss Upton Park as much as everyone else, and I certainly didn’t want to leave. But, as much as it pains me to say, Upton Park is gone, and unless some miraculously wealthy new person comes in and says “let’s build ourselves a brand new, 60,000 seat genuine football stadium”, then we’ll just have to accept the Olympic Stadium as home. Yes, we need the team to play well to motivate us, but it goes both ways, and we have to do everything we can to get behind the team and try to make the place as intimidating as possible for the opposition, giant carpet or no giant carpet. We need band together and stick two collective fingers up at journos who have nothing better to do right now than pen stories about how rubbish the OS is, and how much better it was at Upton Park, and aren’t West Ham suffering because of it. Because otherwise we’ll make it a self-fulfilling prophecy.
No modern stadiums have the atmosphere of the old ones. New generations want comfortable seats, good sightlines, decent toilets and catering.
Plus we all want a ticket, not possible at Upton Park!
The old stadium changed massively over 114 years. This one will once the government get fed up with forking out enormous annual subsidies.
Don’t blame the owners, remember we bid originally to buy it and blundering Boris in cahoots with Levy of the old enemy stopped that happening.
We will prevail and my kids and grandkids love it!!
Phillip has got it spot on. If 50 odd thousand West Ham fans turn up at the London Stadium determined to support the team and create a great atmosphere there will be a great atmosphere. If they turn up saying they don’t want to be there, there will be no atmosphere .
Its up to us.
JohnB
It’s about time to let this go — both the media and some West Ham supporters. The club was never going to move forwards at Upton Park, and could not afford a new large stadium of its own. The sweetheart deal is very advantageous to WHU. There are plenty of similar stadiums in the world used for football. In fact the Empire Stadium at Wembley was very similar and nobody complained about the atmosphere there. West Ham’s recent problems have not been due to the London Stadium, but to inadequate management from boardroom to dressing room. Hopefully the latter is now resolved, and the board are showing some signs at last of having learned some lessons. Onward and upward.
Totally agree with Phillip, John Batty and others.
We have what we have. We only support and want our team to do well. Much better that more of us get the opportunity to see West Ham live than used to be the case at the Boleyn Ground. Seems to me that the ‘knockers’ are either selfish, living in the past or pointing out the ‘unpopularity’ of each new stadium with ‘true fans’.
I don’t think there were too many complaints about new grounds from the vast majority of fans at Middlesbrough, Derby, Arsenal, Cardiff, Sunderland, Darlington, Oxford, Leicester, Reading and so on. Most complaints have been voiced by the comfortable, got my own seat surrounded by loads of people I know, easy to get to the ground after doing the pub where we all have our own seats, too, brigade of older fellows.
Nothing wrong with these folk but in all walks of life we have to be prepared to move on and accept, even embrace, evolution and new circumstances. Trouble with the new places is that all the people around me now don’t know that I’ve been ‘here’ for forty years, man and boy. We all have to start again, no history except in our memories of experiences.
So much nicer to get in to watch games, to be able to get there by public transport or be able to park the car somewhere near and safe. Not to mention Access for All.
London Stadium will develop over time. Whether that will suit everybody is doubtful. What is in no doubt is the Olympic Legacy should be living and useful and not allowed to stand wasted or trashed into a lowland.
COYI