Respected football magazine Four Four Two have taken on the daunting task of ranking the best football stadiums from around the World, and recently published their list of the top 100 which thankfully includes Dublin's Aviva Stadium.
The Aviva earned a respectable position of 88th on the list, which may seem like quite low-down for Ireland's national soccer and rugby stadium, but when you consider that it is was one ahead of the massive Shanghai Stadium and one behind Cape Town Stadium which was designed for the 2010 FIFA World Cup, you begin to see that she's done quite well.
Here is what Four Four Two had to say about it:
Given the non-league look to the end behind one of the goals, it may look like they ran out of money at the end of the build. However, part of the deal to renovate Lansdowne Road in 2007 was that the Aviva would be constructed to make sure nearby residents had enough natural light, and the green bowl satisfies that requirement.
It also satisfies UEFA, who put it on the elite list and gave it the 2011 Europa League final – an all-Portuguese affair between Porto and Braga for which it was temporarily renamed the Dublin Arena – and four matches at Michel Platini’s Europe-wide Euro 2020.
A raucous Irish atmosphere is pretty much guaranteed no matter who the opponent is and with the only other permanent occupants being the Irish national rugby team, the pitch is always in decent nick for Martin O’Neill’s side to play ball.
Fair enough.
The top five on the list reads as follows:
5: San Siro, Milan, Italy.
4: Azteca, Mexico City, Mexico.
3: Wembley, London, England.
2: Camp Nou, Barcelona, Spain.
1: La Bombonera, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
You can read the countdown from 100 to 1 in full over on FourFourTwo.com
