Man Utd have unveiled plans for the new Old Trafford and it comes with a striking feature and some impressive numbers behind it.
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The new Old Trafford will dominate the Manchester skyline and be visible from miles away
The new Old Trafford will dominate the Manchester skyline and be visible from miles away
(Image: Manchester United)
The new 100,000-seater Old Trafford stadium will be the tallest landmark in Manchester and will be visible from the outskirts of Liverpool on a clear day.
Manchester United unveiled plans and images for the new stadium on Tuesday and hope it could be built on land next to the current Old Trafford in the next five years, becoming the biggest and most impressive stadium in the country.
Celebrated Mancunian architect Lord Norman Foster is behind the project and the plans were unveiled at the London headquarters of Foster + Partners on Tuesday.
The stadium features a striking canopy design held up by three masts and it will make it a stunning centrepiece of the transformation of the wider area around Old Trafford.
The canopy would be 104,000 square meters, making it slightly bigger than the Millennium Dome and bigger than the canopy of Munich's Olympiapark canopy, which is 75,000 square meters.
The masts holding the canopy up will bring attention to the new Old Trafford. Two of them will be 150 metres tall but the third will be 200 metres high, making it the tallest building in Manchester, a title currently held by the 169m Beetham Tower.
The arch over Wembley is 135m high, while the stadium will also be taller than the 158m high Blackpool Tower. The Eiffel Tower is 330m tall.
With the masts making the stadium visible for miles around it is expected Old Trafford could be seen from more 37kms away, making it visible from the Peak District and parts of Cheshire. There is also an expectation that it could be seen from the edges of Liverpool on clear days.
In terms of capacity, the Stretford End would hold 23,500 supporters, up from 11,000 currently, making it bigger than the 17,500 capacity behind one of the goals at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, although that is a single-tier stand and the Stretford End would be spread across two tiers.