...a beer glass holder. At the Lucas Oil Stadium Indianapolis. Stunning. Roof closed tonight, whole stadium air conditioned. At least 50,000 in for a friendly. Great facilities. BUT, man the action is slow. They are quite patriotic as well ....
I would be staring at the guy 3 rows in fronts head, it's a fascinating hair line and really very shiny on top. Even his t-shirt says "look".
Here's a thing. At half time they opened the roof. That would take half an hour at Wimbledon, 10 minutes here on a much bigger scale. It's 30 centigrade and very humid. But they've left the aircon on and it works. So you could play football in Qatar in the summer and not die. It would just cost a lot and the fans would keel over as they left the cool oasis of the stadium. Enjoying the experience but the game is really dull and stop start. I quite like it on the telly, and as a preseason friendly what little atmosphere there is is generated by the overloud PA announcers and constant big screen exhortations to shout. Might be different for a game of importance. Neither team fielding their first choice quarterbacks, and the replacements are not very good. But no holding back, some massive hits in the tackle. I'd take a scaled down 30,000 seater version of this stadium, with a steeper first tier and closer to the pitch (easier when the sidelines don't have to accommodate two squads of 100 players and about 50 coaches each, plus dozens of cheerleaders). And keep the roof, it's brilliant, plus massive concourses stuffed with bars and food stall (pricey). Dream on.......
If you have time (and inclination), take a trip to Toronto - BMO Field has about the capacity you mentioned and is supposed to be purpose built for football. Personally I think the BMO seats start too far from the pitch itself but I am maybe biased sine I once had a front row dead centre seat in the Ellerslie road stand (superb seat but not such a great match - we drew)
As it happens I'll be in Toronto tomorrow...for about 90 minutes, connecting back to Heathrow. I'll try and arrange a longer trip.
Sorry Stan ...the 19C industralised railway station look doesn't float my boat. The third tier looks unfeasible, like the upper tiers of the Lomodon olympic siwimming pool arena (removed after the Olympics) And the slope on the lower tiers not steep enough. But if we could replace the airconditioning with warm-air blowers (around the foot area) ...for those freezing Wedesday night in January matches, I may change my mind Impressed by the 2006 "World Champions" tag...typical Americans calling themselves World Champions for winning an event that only US teams can enter
Must admit not overly taken with the industrialised look, the huge glass at the end makes it look like Kings Cross station before the revamp......but it is impressive that they can build a stadium of that size with a roof and air conditioning/heating, surely a 30k stadium with those kind of facilities is doable, but then again any new stadium is so far down the line we will have to put up with Loftus Road for many years yet. Regarding the game itself, any thing that takes 3 or 4 hours to have only an hour of action doesn't do it for me, must be quite tedious to watch...... Safe journey home Stan....
Lucas Oil St. is one of my favourite sports stadiums on the planet. Dallas Cowboys' is at another level though, simply breathtaking and it holds over 100.000 people!!!
It's not a beer glass holder - it's for resting your telescope on at half time. Great picture, Stan, but the pitch is way too far from the spectators imo. It makes me wonder whether those at the back of the top stand see anything at all.
I admit that it looks very impressive. From the pictures it has the feel of a very large "indoor stadium" rather than an outdoor stadium "with rectractable roof". ...but I could be wrong totally wrong from the pictures
He's obviously popular, tons of shirts with his name on. I know nothing about that sport, it holds no interest for me, but they certainly know how to market their product
