Euro News
Estadio
the changes in stadium design and needs since 1974’s Parkstadion appeared. As explained in the last
issue of Groundtastic, the final selection of venues for 2006 will not be made until next Summer, but it’s
already clear that the chosen 10 or 12 will each be special in their own way.
Moving away from the glitzy 2006 venues, Hansa Rostock have made good progress with the total
rebuild of their Ostseestadion into the 25,000-seat “Hansa-Arena”. The running track has been removed, and continuous single-tier stands built next to the pitch. At present only one end has been roofed
but work is expected to finish by the end the current season. Floodlight-lovers will be relieved to hear that
Rostock’s trademark leaning towers will remain. The promotion of SpVgg Unterhaching, the tiny club
from a Munich suburb, back to the Bundesliga in 1999 has finally led to some essential work being carried out on their “Sportpark” home, which only opened in 1992 with 7,500 places. Bundesliga stadiums
require a minimum capacity of 15,000, but ‘Haching got a year’s grace to add extra spaces in the North
End and East Stand, which also got a roof.
Moving down to the Regional Leagues, SC Schwabach 04 of the Bavarian League (roughly Conference standard) opened their new stadium on 25 July with a 2-1 defeat against ASV Neumarkt in front of
3,200 fans. The cantilevered main stand has seats for 800 and somewhat strangely the ground has five
floodlight towers. Even lower down, the Friedrich-Ludwig-Jahn Stadion of Saxony-based Grun-Weiss
Wolfen is presently undergoing a complete rebuild, with new stands for 5,000 going up in time for
2001/2002.
The big news in France is the brand new home of First Division pacesetters Sedan. The Stade Louis
Dugauguez, named after the man who coached the team from 1948 to 1974, has been built directly
behind the club’s existing Stade Emile Albeau. The design of the new stadium is a larger copy of
Caen’s Stade Michel d’Ornano, with two tiers right round the ground under a propped cantilever roof,
but Sedan have yet to finish the end which backs onto the East side stand of the old ground, providing a
less than picturesque sight for the time being. Present capacity of the “Dugauguez” is 17,000 but that will
rise to 24,000 on completion of the bowl, with 20 executive boxes. The new stadium was opened on October
10th with a 2-1 win over Rennes in a League fixture in
front of 13,366 fans; this was Rennes’ second visit to
Sedan this season for a League game as the original
fixture at the old stadium was abandoned due to waterlogging. Even the replayed game wasn’t without a hitch
as the floodlights failed after 56 minutes of play, but
they came back on after a 12-minute stoppage. Elsewhere in France, newly-promoted Lille, also flying high
in the First Division, have added an upper tier to the