On The Ball | The iconic football stadiums falling by the wayside in the name of progress

A new book arrived on the 31st anniversary of the Hillsborough stadium disaster last week featuring 25 years of lost football grounds and stands in the UK. After 50 years where almost no football team moved homes until Scunthorpe United in 1988, new stadiums and stands proliferated to make venues safer after Hillsborough.

So many iconic homes of football have been lost. So many of them were far more interesting than what followed. The new stadiums are undoubtedly safer, but most lack the character of the old ones.

Middlesbrough, Derby County, Southampton and the Citys of Leicester, Hull, Coventry, Cardiff and Stoke play in near identical 30,000-seater bowls built relatively cheaply. They offer clear unobstructed views and spacious concourses from the days when a trip to the toilets at Derby’s Baseball Ground was a threat to public health. This is progress, yet those old homes were packed with quirkiness, with barrel roofs, awkward three-tier stands and vast terraces.

Clubs moved to the fringes of towns and away from the pubs and communities they served. I’ve visited 91 of the current 92 English league grounds and hundreds more at lower levels and around the world. The 91st was Colchester United recently, a new stadium stuck out by the ring road and, according to a flustered mate, “a good 25 minutes walk” from the train station. Fans bemoaned that it lacked the atmosphere of their old, chaotic, clunky Layer Road home.

Few of the new grounds are of architectural note. Bolton Wanderers, Brighton & Hove Albion, Manchester City and Arsenal’s Emirates are. Spurs’ new stadium is probably the best in the world when judged on facilities and architecture. Arsenal’s was incredible when it opened in 2008, but it has never been noted for atmosphere.